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THE  ETHICS 


GEORGE  ELIOT'S  WORKS 


THE  ETHICS 


OF 


GEORGE  ELIOT'S  WORKS 


BY   THE   LATE 

JOHN  CROMBIE  BROWN 


WITH     AN    INTRODUCTION    BY 

CHARLES  GORDON  AMES 

AUTHOR    OF   GEORGE   ELIOT'S   TWO   MARRIAGES 


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PHILADELPHIA 
GEORGE  H  BUCHANAN  AND  COMPANY 

1885 


Copyright,  1885,  by 
George  H.  Buchanan  and  Company 


PHILADELPHIA 


PR4M2. 


INTRODUCTION 


Herewith  is  offered  to  the  American  public  a 
reprint  of  "the  pretty  little  book  "  to  which  George 
Eliot  refers  in  a  letter  addressed  to  Mr.  John  Black- 
wood, of  the  Edinburgh  publishing  firm,  on  the 
28th  of  June,   1879.      Here  are  her  words: 

"  Thank  you  for  sending  me  the  pretty  little  book. 
I  am  deeply  touched  by  the  account  of  its  origin, 
and  I  remember  well  everything  you  said  to  me  of 
Mr.  Brown  in  old  days  when  he  was  still  with  you. 
I  had  only  cut  a  very  little  way  into  the  volume 
when  a  friend  came  and  carried  it  off;  but  my  eyes 
had  already  been  arrested  by  some  remarks  on  the 
character  of  Harold  Transome  (pp.  28-30),  which 
seemed  to  me  more  penetrating  and  finely  felt  than 
almost  anything  I  have  read  in  the  way  of  printed 
comment  on  my  own  writing.  When  my  friend 
brings  back  the  volume  I  shall  read  it  reverentially, 
and  most  probably  with  a  sense  of  being  usefully 
admonished.  For  praise  and  sympathy  arouse  much 
more  self-suspicion  and  sense  of  short-coming  than 
all  the  blame  and  depreciation  of  all  the  Pepins." 


vi  Introduction 

A  preface  to  the  third  edition  contains  also  this 
extract  from  her  letter  to  a  friend  of  the  deceased 
author: 

"When  I  read  the  volume  in  the  summer,  I  felt 
as  if  I  had  been  deprived  of  something  that  should 
have  fallen  to  my  share  in  never  having  made  his 
personal  acquaintance.  And  it  would  have  been 
a  great  benefit,  a  great  stimulus  to  me,  to  have 
known  some  years  earlier  that  my  work  was  being 
sanctioned  by  the  sympathy  of  a  mind  endowed 
with  so  much  insight  and  delicate  sensibility.  It  is 
difficult  for  me  to  speak  of  what  others  may  regard 
as  an  excessive  estimate  of  my  own  work ;  but  I  will 
venture  to  mention  the  keen  perception  shown  in 
the  note  on  pages  28-29,  as  something  that  gave 
me  peculiar  satisfaction." 

George  Eliot  once  declared  it  "  a  perilous  mat- 
ter to  approve  the  praise  which  is  given  one's  own 
work."  We  may  guess,  therefore,  that  her  com- 
mendation of  this  book  was  written  in  partial  oblivion 
of  some  of  its  admiring  superlatives ;  or  that,  in 
turning  over  its  pages,  she  did  not  let  her  eyes  rest 
long  on  certain  passages  ;  such,  for  example,  as  the 
estimate  of  "  Romola"  on  page  30,  or  of  the  "Span- 
ish Gypsy "  on  page  52;  and  perhaps  she  quite 
overlooked  a  paragraph  on  page  89,  where  some  one 
is  mentioned  as  "  unquestionably  the  greatest  fiction- 
ist  of  the  age — is  it  too  much  to  say,  the  greatest 
genius  of  our  English  nineteenth  century?"  She 
had  elsewhere  spoken  of  the  necessity  of  keeping 


Introduction  vii 

out  of  the  buzz  of  compliment  in  order  to  avoid 
distraction  of  mind  and  damage  to  her  work.  But 
this  tribute  reached  her  after  her  literary  career  was 
ended  and  during  the  deep  depression  of  her 
widowhood.  Besides,  it  may  as  well  be  allowed 
that  a  whiff  of  pure  incense  now  and  then  may  not 
be  so  disagreeable  as  the  puffs  of  vulgar  adulation. 
To  be  sure,  the  common  air  is  most  wholesome  and 
bracing;  but  ought  not  the  common  air  to  be  com- 
pounded in  part  of  just  appreciation  and  sympathy  ? 
And  when  it  comes  to  measurements  of  merit, 
every  author  must  know — as  most  of  us  common 
people  have  some  chance  to  learn — that  all  unsym- 
pathetic criticism  is  unjust. 

The  discerning  reader  will  at  once  recognize  in 
Mr.  Brown  a  writer  of  rich  gifts,  genuine  culture 
and  fine  spirit.  The  hearty  praise  he  bestows 
expresses  the  honest  verdict  of  a  jury  of  well-trained 
faculties.  From  his  own  luminous  mind,  a  clear 
light  shines  over  his  subject,  a  light  which  is  also 
warm  with  passionate  love  of  good.  And  the  compact 
account  he  gives  of  each  one  of  George  Eliot's 
works  must  prove  a  pleasant  service,  both  to  those 
who  have  read  them  and  to  those  who  have  not. 

George  Eliot,  is  here  studied,  not  as  a  novelist  or 
literary  artist,  but  as  a  moral  teacher ;  and  the  letters 
recently  published  give  ample  evidence  that  she  held 
her  gifts  as  an  author  subordinate  to  her  functions 
as  an  ethical  guide  and  inspirer.  "  My  predominant 
feeling,"  she  once  wrote,  "  is  that  great,  great  truths 


viii  Introduction 

have  struggled  to  find  a  voice  through  me,  and  have 
only  been  able  to  speak  brokenly."  She  expresses 
a  strong  desire  "  to  touch  the  hearts  of  her  fellow- 
men  and  sprinkle  some  precious  grains."  This 
sense  of  a  mission  made  her  look  on  poor  work  as  a 
sin.  What  can  be  more  touching  than  to  find  her 
reading  "  Romola,"  fourteen  years  after  its  publica- 
tion, with  "sobs  of  painful  joy"  from  a  rediscovery 
that  "  every  sentence  was  written  with  her  best 
blood,  and  with  an  ardent  care  for  veracity  ?  "  But 
what  seed  had  she  to  sow?  What  great  truth 
struggled  in  her  spirit  for  utterance  ?  Let  us  look 
broadly. 

What  is  the  true  law  of  life  ?  That  is  the  quest  of 
the  ages.  No  matter  how  often  affirmed  or  how  well ; 
it  must  ever  be  re-affirmed  and  in  the  latest  dialect. 
"On  all  great  subjects,"  says  Mill,  "there  is  always 
something  more  to  be  said." 

"  Truth  can  never  be  confirmed  enough, 
Though  doubts  did  always  sleep." 

Fresh  contributions  come  in  from  every  epoch, 
every  phase  of  human  development,  every  original 
mind.  Consciously  or  unconsciously,  all  the  philos- 
ophers, poets,  and  masters  of  literature  are  put  on 
the  stand,  examined  and  cross-examined,  each  mak- 
ing answer  according  to  his  light — or  his  darkness. 

The  old  satanic  question  is  still  asked,  "  Doth  Job 
serve  God  for  naught  ?"  George  Eliot's  answer  is 
not  far  to  seek.     Her  conception  of  virtue,  or  right- 


Introduction  ix 

eousness,  is  quite  apart  from  all  considerations  of 
wages.  Goodness  is  not  paid  off  in  any  form  of 
external  advantage;  it  may,  or  it  may  not,  bring 
worldly  prosperity  :  it  never  asks.  It  ceases  to  be 
goodness,  at  least  of  the  highest  kind,  when  it  has 
respect  to  recompense.  It  consists  in  simple  fidelity 
to  the  best-known  law,  regardless  of  consequences. 
Planted  on  principle,  it  replies  to  all  clamors  of 
sense,  tradition,  conformity,  or  self-interest,  "  Here  I 
stand  :  I  cannot  otherwise  ! " 

Our  author  examines  every  book  George  Eliot 
has  written,  and  finds  in  each,  as  its  central  and 
vitalizing  idea,  "the  doctrine  of  the  Cross;"  not  as 
theologically  formulated,  but  as  the  symbol  of  that 
spirit  and  law  of  self-sacrifice,  or  self-giving,  which 
merges  the  individual  life  in  universal  ends.  To 
this  interpretation,  which  he  richly  illustrates,  she 
appears  to  have  offered  no  dissent:  it  evidently  im- 
pressed her  as  a  true  insight.  Indeed  the  higher 
range  of  moral  teaching  ever  sweeps  toward  har- 
mony with  the  wisdom  which  bids  us  save  the  soul 
by  losing  it, — by  risking  the  perdition  of  our  private 
and  personal  interest  in  devotion  to  something 
larger.  In  the  death  of  selfishness  we  find  our  true 
life.  What  else  does  Seneca  mean  when  he  says, 
"We  become  happy  by  not  needing  happiness?  If 
you  would  live  for  yourself  live  for  others?"  What 
else  Cicero  :  "  We  are  created  for  the  sake  of  man- 
kind,— to  be  useful  to  each  other  ?  "  Or  Antipater 
Tyrius  :  "  Obey  that    law  of  nature  which    makes 


x  Introduction 

your  interest  the  universal,  and  the  universal  your 
own?"  Or  Epictetus  :  "Better  die  than  live  ill  ?" 
Or  Marcus  Aurelius,  when  he  urges  that  we  should 
"Keep  the  divinity  within  us  from  harm, — superior 
to  pain  or  pleasure?"  The  same  music  of  the 
spheres  sings  itself  through  another  of  George  Eliot's 
favorite  masters,  Spinoza,  when  he  says,  "The  truest 
love  for  person  or  cause  is  that  which  cares  not  for 
recognition  or  reward."  All  of  these  seers  announce 
a  law  above  and  beyond  our  personal  self-will ;  and 
they  find  the  divine  expression  of  that  law  in  our 
human  relations  and  duties.  St.  Paul  embodies  the 
same  truth  in  a  telling  metaphor,  "We  are  one 
body — members  one  of  another." 

While  George  Eliot's  earlier  confession  of  dis- 
cipleship  was  qualified  by  her  later  experiences,  she 
held  on  with  ever-growing  tenacity  to  the  precept, 
¥  Do  good,  hoping  for  nothing  again."  But  she  did 
not  pose  as  a  Christian,  nor  yet  as  an  anti-Christian, 
being  disinclined  to  invest  her  spiritual  capital  in  a 
name.  Despite  the  undermining  process  which  she 
furthered  by  translating  Strauss  and  Feuerbach,  she 
never  gave  up  her  reverence  for  Jesus.  Finding  no 
satisfactory  material  for  his  biography,  she  yet  saw  in 
his  life,  "  the  meeting-place  and  new  starting-point  " 
of  sacred  truths  and  high  spiritual  forces.  "  We 
can  never  have  a  satisfactory  basis  for  the  history 
of  the  man  Jesus,"  she  says  ;  "  but  that  negation 
does  not  affect  the  idea  of  the  Christ,  either  in  its 
historical  influence  or  its  great  symbolic  meanings." 


Introduction  xi 

Counting  "  religious  and  moral  sympathy  with  the 
historical  life  of  man  the  larger  half  of  culture," 
she  welcomed  even  such  a  superficial  book  as 
Renan's  "  Vie  de  Jesus,"  because  it  might  "  help  the 
popular  imagination  to  feel  that  the  sacred  past  is 
of  one  woof  with  that  human  present  which  ought 
to  be  sacred  too."  She  hesitates  at  Christianity 
only  for  "  want  of  evidence."  But  wisdom  and  love, 
made  alive  and  giving  life  to  man,  should  be  their 
own  evidence,  like  light  and  heat.  Unfortunately 
"  Christianity  "  has  not  always  been  used  as  a  syn- 
onym of  that  life  which  is  everywhere  the  light  of 
man.  Did  she,  then,  reject  the  essence  or  only  the 
questionable  form  ? 

Precisely  because  her  faith  in  supernatural  sanc- 
tions and  authorities  failed,  she  was  powerfully 
urged  from  within  to  vindicate  the  verity  and 
validity  of  spiritual  laws  and  ethical  principles  on 
their  own  account.  The  virtues  are  themselves 
living  powers,  she  thought,  however  mysterious 
may  be  the  source  of  their  life.  Love  and  justice 
are  absolute  authorities  for  man,  even  if  he  is  alone 
with  his  brother  in  the  spiritual  universe.  To 
Mrs.  Ponsonby  she  writes :  "  Pity  and  fairness — two 
little  words  which  carried  out  would  embrace  the 
utmost  delicacies  of  the  moral  life — seem  to  me  not 
to  rest  on  an  unverifiable  basis,  but  are  facts  quite 
as  irreversible  as  the  perception  that  a  pyramid  will 
not  stand  on  its  apex."  Not  the  less  does  she 
recognize  the  value  of  high  ideals  and  the  tuition  of 


xii  Introduction 

noble  leadership.  "The  devotion  of  the  common 
soldier  to  his  leader  (the  sign  for  him  of  hard  duty) 
is  the  type  of  all  higher  devotedness,  and  is  full  of 
promise  to  other  and  better  generations." 

We  are  thus  led  to  a  view  of  George  Eliot's 
works  and  of  her  life-motive  which  may  have  es- 
caped Mr.  Brown's  attention,  though  by  no  means 
inconsistent  with  the  view  taken  by  himself.  Indeed, 
it  is  an  advance  on  the  same  line.  Take  this  sig- 
nificant passage  from  one  of  her  letters :  "  My 
books  have  for  their  main  bearing  ....  a 
conclusion  without  which  I  could  not  have  cared  to 
write  any  representation  of  human  life ;  namely, 
that  the  fellowship  between  man  and  man  which  has 
been  the  principle  of  development,  social  and  moral, 
is  not  dependent  on  conceptions  of  what  is  not  in 
man  ;  and  that  the  idea  of  God,  so  far  as  it  has  been 
a  high  spiritual  influence,  is  the  ideal  of  a  goodness 
entirely  human  (/.  e.,  an  exaltation  of  the  human)." 
Again  :  "  It  is  really  hideous  to  find  that  those  who 
sit  in  the  scribes'  seat  have  got  no  further  than  the 
appeal  to  selfishness,  which  they  call  God."  This 
is  sufficiently  explicit.  Had  she  found  a  hint  of 
this  in  those  Scriptures  which  teach  that  God  can 
neither  be  seen  nor  known  except  as  He  is  "  manifest 
in  the  flesh  ?  "  Such  manifestation  she  was  indeed 
forbidden  to  limit  to  one  Son  of  God  or  Son  of 
Man,  except  as  that  one  might  illustrate  and  illu- 
minate the  whole  sacred  history  of  the  race.  But 
the  implicit  fact  is  that  she  felt  called  to  set  morality 


Introduction  xiii 

on  its  own  basis,  apart  from  all  dogmas  that  are 
open  to  question, — a  task  of  very  high  import  in  an 
age  when  all  things  that  can  be  shaken  are  threatened 
with  removal. 

For  such  a  task  she  could  only  have  been  pre- 
pared by  a  searching  personal  experience — an  ex- 
perience which  drew  after  it  the  loss  of  traditional 
beliefs,  yet  permitted  her  to  hold  fast  her  moral/ 
convictions.  Religious  faith  itself  did  not  die;  it' 
retreated  into  the  inner  citadel,  beyond  the  shafts  of 
logic;  thence  it  spoke  through  reason  and  conscience, 
proclaiming  the  highest  law  of  duty,  even  when  it 
could  hardly  articulate  one  word  of  comfort  or  hope. 
Such  an  experience  is  not  to  be  coveted  ;  it  is  a  kind 
of  crucifixion  for  the  sins  of  theology. 

There  was  a  time  when  the  universe  appeared  to 
George  Eliot  as  the  outspreading  smile  of  a  loving 
Father  ;  but  intellectual  difficulties  drove  her  to  say, 
"  God  is  unthinkable."  She  found  a  graver  and 
moral  difficulty  in  the  current  use  of  God's  name  in 
the  interest  of  selfishness.  Yet  she  was  restrained 
from  denial*  ;  and  amid  this  awful  solitude  of  non- 
belief  she  recognized  a  true  divinity  in  the  soul  and 
in  humanity  ;  and  reverently  consecrated  herself  to 

*  "  I  have  too  profound  a  conviction  of  the  efficacy  that  lies  in  all 
sincere  faith,  and  the  spiritual  blight  that  comes  with  no  faith,  to 
have  any  negative  propagandism  in  me.  In  fact,  I  have  very  little 
sympathy  with  Free-thinkers  as  a  class,  and  have  lost  all  interest  in 
mere  antagonism  to  religious  doctrines.  I  care  only  to  know,  if 
possible,  the  lasting  meaning  that  lies  in  all  religious  doctrine,  from  the 
beginning  till  now." — Her  letter  to  JMdme.  Bodichon,  Nov.  26,  1862. 


xiv  Introduction 

the  correction  and  improvement  of  her  own  life,  and 
to  "  helping  in  some  small  way  to  reduce  the  sum 
of  ignorance,  degradation  and  misery  on  the  face 
of  this  beautiful  earth." 

There  was  a  time  when  she  could  say,  "  We  have 
infinity  in  which  to  stretch  the  gaze  of  hope."  There 
came  a  time  when  she  was  obliged  to  cry  out, 
"  Immortality  is  incredible.  ...  I  could  be  inter- 
ested in  everything,  if  I  only  had  large  spaces  of 
time."  Yet  her  spiritual  nature,  feeling  itself  shut 
up  and  cramped  in  the  fleeting  moment,  struggled 
like  an  immortal  to  crowd  it  with  eternal  meaning, 
and  projected  a  phantom-image  of  itself  on  all  the 
future  of  humanity,  trusting  to  "  live  again  in  minds 
made  better  "  and  thus  to 

"  Make  undying  music  in  the  world." 

In  this  attempt  to  separate  ethics  from  theology, 
the  devoutest  believer  may  recognize  a  wise  and 
loving  guidance — a  providential  preparation  for  a 
higher  and  purer  faith.  Hitherto,  religion  has  often 
been  made  to  appear  in  a  false  attitude  toward 
morality.  It  has  been  imposed  on  us  from  without; 
it  has  not  been  a  proper  part  of  our  life-evolution, 
unfolding  into  righteousness  as  naturally  as  leaf  and 
blossom  into  fruit.  It  has  been  something  quite 
different  from  a  higher  common  sense  ;  and  too  often 
it  has  operated  as  a  denial  of  the  unity  and  univer- 
sality of  spiritual  laws  and  of  their  perpetual  retribu- 
tions and  redemptions  within  our  life  and  in  human 


Introduction  xv 

history.  Against  all  this,  George  Eliot  has  brought 
.to- bear  those  dramatic  presentations  of  human  life 
in  which  reality  continually  works  out  its  results  of 
good  or  ill,  under  the  unalterable  order  of  cause 
and  effect. 

An  eclipse  of  faith,  like  an  eclipse  of  the  sun,  casts 
a  dreadful  shadow;  but  it  is  a  transient  phenomenon 
which  permits  important  observations.  This  un- 
natural separation  of  ethics  from  spirituality  as  a 
whole  can  never  last  long  :  it  is  only  necessary 
to  a  new  adjustment  and  better  understanding. 
Agnostics,  Positivists,  and  Secularists  cannot  bear 
to  give  up  the  word  "  religion  "  :  a  sacred  spell 
holds  them  to  trust  in  the  unnamed  Goodness.  To 
cut  apart  religion  and  morality  would  let  the  life- 
blood  out  of  both, — as  who  has  not  seen  or  felt  ? 
Indeed,  they  are  two  phases  of  one  fact — spiritual 
life.  Like  the  gases  of  the  atmosphere,  they  may 
exist  apart,  but  not  as  media  of  vitality  for  creatures 
of  high  organization.  A  religious  feeling  without 
conscience  there  may  have  been  in  "  the  ages  before 
morality;"  a  regulative  social  principle  without 
religious  feeling  there  may  have  been  in  secular 
communities ;  but  either  state  implies  a  low  develop- 
ment. Something  better  has  become  possible  ; 
viz.,  a  love  of  truth  and  duty,  deepened,  sweetened, 
inspired  and  sustained  by  the  love  of  God  and  man. 

Even  theology — that  weak  and  wavering  effort 
of  the  human  mind  to  discover  and  define  its  own 
relations  to  the  Unknowable — must  yet  resume  and 


xvi  Introduction 

maintain  its  place  of  honor  and  power,  not  only  as 
a  necessity  of  thought,  but  as  a  support  to  moral 
aspiration.  Those  who  give  up  the  old  solutions 
are  continually  feeling  after  new  ones, — feeling  after 
God,  if  haply  they  may  find  him, — else  they  wander 
like  homesick  children.  Because  the  Power  which 
is  not  ourselves  "  makes  for  righteousness,"  and 
because  that  Power  "  works  in  us  to  will  and  to  do," 
we  need  not  look  beyond  the  human  soul  to  find 
the  Great  White  Throne — the  King,  the  kingdom 
of  the  law. 

"  O  that  we  were  of  one  mind,  and  that  mind  were 
good  ! "  To  know  and  love  and  do  the  right,  because 
it  is  right ;  to  hate  and  shun  and  resist  evil,  because 
it  is  evil : — do  we  need  anything  more  for  ethical 
completeness  ?  No  ;  but  in  order  to  gain  and  keep 
this,  we  need  more  than  this.  We  need  to  be  con- 
tinually "  renewed  in  the  spirit  of  our  minds,"  we 
need  what  Emerson  calls  "  new  infusions  of  the 
spirit :  "  that  is,  we  need,  as  trees  and  flowers  do, 
an  ever-fresh  income  of  life  from  the  original  Source. 
We  need  to  live  en  rapport  with  those  powers  and 
influences  which  operate  to  correct  our  wrong 
predispositions,  revitalize  our  languid  moral  sense, 
quicken  our  sluggish  sympathies,  refine  our  affec- 
tions, elevate  the  entire  range  of  our  life,  and  convert 
duty  into  delight.  Are  there  not  such  powers  and 
influences,  whose  help,  under  certain  discoverable 
conditions,  we  lose,  to  our  unutterable  impoverish- 
ment,   and    under    other    conditions    win,    to    our 


Introduction  xvii 

unutterable  enrichment  ?  Precisely  because  in  one 
case,  life  deadens  down  to  "  miserable  aims  that  end 
with  self,"  while  in  the  other  case,  it  rises  buoyantly 
in  glad  loyalty  to  every  trust.  If,  historically,  law 
comes  first,  as  in  Moses,  while  love  comes  later,  as 
in  Jesus,  should  we  not  find  herein  a  hint  of  the 
true  order  of  each  soul's  development  ?  To  develop 
backward,  toward  law  alone,  seems  more  like  atavism 
than  progress. 

Progress  comes  with  synthesis, — the  blending  of 
all  forms  of  the  true,  the  beautiful,  and  the  good,  in 
a  brightening  and  winsome  ideal  of  the  Perfect. 
Every  truth  is  qualified  by  every  other :  and  ethical 
culture,  for  its  own  completeness,  must  keep  com- 
pany with  every  other  kind  of  culture.  When  it  is 
seen  that  the  sentiments  of  dependence,  reverence, 
mystery,  trust,  and  aspiration,  are  just  as  valid  as 
this  central  and  commanding  sentiment  of  duty 
— when  it  is  seen  that  they  supply  its  support,  its 
nutriment,  its  atmosphere,  and  that  they  are  co- 
indicators  of  our  spiritual  nature,  our  relations,  and 
our  destiny — then  will  morality  or  virtue  find  its 
help  and  not  its  hindrance  in  rational  faith  and 
worship. 

The  poor  and  painful  idolatry  we  practice  in 
bowing  before  the  images  of  the  Unimageable, 
which  we  have  fashioned  out  of  materials  imported 
from  Nowhere — this  exhausting  strain  after  concep- 
tions of  the  Inconceivable  and  definitions  of  the 
Infinite — must  give  way  to  a  restful  acceptance  of  so 


xviii  Introduction 

much  of  Divinity  as  is  increasingly  manifest  in 
Humanity,  and  especially  in  Humanity  at  its  best. 
Devotion  thus  culminates  in  self-fidelity  and  self- 
forgetting  service. 

From  this  point  of  view,  George  Eliot's  ostensible 
atheism  resolves  itself  into  a  blind  theism,  disclosing 
an  inward,  vital  connection  with  the  esoteric  truth 
of  all  great  religions, — with  the  Hebrew  teaching 
which  finds  the  high  and  lofty  One  in  the  humble 
soul,  and  with  the  Christian  gospel  which  not  only 
reveals  the  Fatherhood  in  sonship  and  in  brother- 
hood, but,  regardless  of  creed,  pronounces  a  bless- 
ing on  every  one  who  hungers  and  thirsts  after 
righteousness — an  appetite  which  is  itself///^  blessing. 
Let  theology,  therefore,  take  its  own  hint,  and  be 
content  to  save  its  life  by  losing  it. 

"  Heartily  know 
When  the  half-gods  go 
The  gods  arrive." 


C.  G.  A. 


Philadelphia,  November,  i! 


Note. — Those  who  wish  to  see  the  subject  of  this  book  treated 
in  another  light  may  find  an  able  article  on  "  The  Moral  Influence  of 
George  Eliot"  in  the  Contemporary  Review  for  February,  1881,  by 
"One  Who  Knew  Her." 


PREFACE 

The  greater  part  of  the  following  Essay  was 
written  several  years  ago.  It  was  too  long  for  any 
of  the  periodicals  to  which  the  author  had  been 
in  the  habit  of  occasionally  contributing,  and  no 
thought  was  then  entertained  of  publishing  it  in 
a  separate  form.  One  day,  however,  during  his 
last  illness,  the  talk  happened  to  turn  on  George 
Eliot's  Works,  and  he  mentioned  his  long-forgotten 
paper.  One  of  the  friends  then  present — a  com- 
petent critic  and  high  literary  authority — expressed 
a  wish  to  see  it,  and  his  opinion  was  so  favorable 
that  its  publication  was  determined  on.  The 
author  then  proposed  to  complete  his  work  by 
taking  up  "  Middlemarch  "    and   "  Deronda  ;  "    and 


xx  Preface 

if  any  trace  of  failing  vigor  is  discernible  in  these 
latter  pages,  the  reader  will  bear  in  mind  that  the 
greater  portion  of  them  was  composed  when  the 
author  was  rapidly  sinking  under  a  painful  disease, 
and  that  the  concluding  paragraphs  were  dictated 
to  his  daughter  after  the  power  of  writing  had 
failed  him,   only  five  days   before  his   death. 


THE    ETHICS 


GEORGE   ELIOT'S   WORKS 


"  There  is  in  man  a  higher  than  love  of  happiness : 
he  can  do  without  happiness,  and  instead  thereof 
find  blessedness." 

Such  may  be  regarded  as  the  fundamental  lesson 
which  one  of  the  great  teachers  of  our  time  has  been 
laboring  to  impress  upon  the  age.  The  truth,  and 
the  practical  corollary  from  it,  are  not  now  first  enun- 
ciated. Representing,  as  we  believe  it  to  do,  the 
practical  aspect  of  the  noblest  reality  in  man — that 
which  most  directly  represents  Him  in  whose  image 
he  is  made — it  has  found  doctrinal  expression  more 
or  less  perfect  from  the  earliest  times.  The  older 
Theosophies  and  Philosophies — Gymnosophist  and 
Cynic,  Chaldaic  and  Pythagorean,  Epicurean  and 
Stoic,  Platonist  and  Eclectic — were  all  attempts  to 
embody  it  in  teaching,  and  to  carry  it  out  in  life. 
They  saw,  indeed,  but  imperfectly,  and  their  expres- 


2  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

sions  of  the  truth  are  all  one-sided  and  inadequate. 
But  they  did  see,  in  direct  antagonism  alike  to  the 
popular  view  and  to  the  natural  instinct  of  the  animal 
man,  that  what  is  ordinarily  called  happiness  does  not 
represent  the  highest  capability  in  humanity,  or  meet 
its  indefinite  aspirations ;  and  that  in  degree  as  it  is 
consciously  made  so,  life  becomes  animalized  and 
degraded.  The  whole  scheme  of  Judaism,  as  first 
promulgated  in  all  the  stern  simplicity  of  its  awful 
Theism,  where  the  Divine  is  fundamentally  and  em- 
phatically represented  as  the  Omnipotent  and  the 
Avenger,  was  an  emphatic  protest  against  that  self- 
isolation  in  which  the  man  folds  himself  up  like  a 
chrysalid  in  its  cocoon  whenever  his  individual  happi- 
ness— the  so-called  saving  of  his  own  soul — becomes 
the  aim  and  aspiration  of  his  life.  In  one  sense  the 
Jew  of  Moses  had  no  individual  as  apart  from  a 
national  existence.  The  secret  sin  of  Achan,  the 
vaunting  pride  of  David,  call  forth  less  individual 
than  national  calamity. 

At  last  in  the  fulness  of  time  there  came  forth 
One — whence  and  how  we  do  not  stop  to  inquire — 
who  gathered  up  into  himself  all  these  tangled,  broken, 
often  divergent  threads ;  who  gave  to  this  truth,  so 
far  as  one  very  brief  human  life  could  give — at  once 
its  perfect  and  exhaustive  doctrinal  expression,  and  its 
essentially  perfect  and  exhaustive  practical  exemplifi- 
cation, by  life  and  by  death.  Endless  controversies 
have  stormed  and  are  still  storming  around  that  name 
which  He  so  significantly  and  emphatically  appro- 


Introductory — Doctrine  of  the  Cross  3 

priated — the  "  Son  of  Man."  But  from  amid  all  the 
controversy  that  veils  it,  one  fact,  clear,  sharp,  and 
unchallenged,  stands  out  as  the  very  life  and  seal  of 
His  human  greatness — "  He  pleased  not  Himself." 
By  every  act  He  did,  every  word  He  spoke,  and  every 
pain  He  bore,  He  put  away  from  Him  happiness  as 
the  aim  and  end  of  man.  He  reduced  it  to  its  true 
position  of  a  possible  accessory  and  issue  of  man's 
highest  fulfilment  of  life — an  issue,  the  contemplation 
of  which  might  be  of  some  avail  as  the  being  first 
awoke  to  its  nobler  capabilites,  but  which,  the  more 
the  life  went  on  towards  realization,  passed  the  more 
away  from  conscious  regard. 

Thenceforth  the  Cross,  as  the  typical  representa- 
tion of  this  truth,  became  a  recognized  power  on  the 
earth.  Thenceforth  every  great  teacher  of  humanity 
within  the  pale  of  nominal  Christendom,  whatever 
his  apparent  tenets  or  formal  creed,  has  been,  in 
degree  as  he  was  great  and  true,  explicitly  or  implic- 
itly the  expounder  of  this  truth ;  every  great  and 
worthy  life,  in  degree  as  it  assimilated  to  that  ideal 
life,  has  been  the  practical  embodiment  of  it.  "  En- 
dure hardness,"  said  one  of  its  greatest  apostles  and 
martyrs,  "as  good  soldiers  of  Christ."  And  to  the 
endurance  of  hardness  ;  to  the  recognition  of  some- 
thing in  humanity  to  which  what  we  ordinarily  call 
life  and  all  its  joys  are  of  no  account ;  to  the  abnega- 
tion of  mere  happiness  as  aim  or  end, — to  this  the 
world  of  Christendom  thenceforth  became  pledged,  if 
it  would  not  deny  its  Head  and  trample  on  His  cross. 


4  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

In  no  age  has  the  truth  been  a  popular  one:  when 
it  becomes  so,  the  triumph  of  the  Cross — and  in  it 
the  practical  redemption  of  humanity — will  be  near 
at  hand.  Yet  in  no  age — not  the  darkest  and  most 
corrupt  Christendom  has  yet  seen — have  God  and 
His  Christ  been  without  their  witnesses  to  the  higher 
truth, — witnesses,  if  not  by  speech  and  doctrine,  yet 
by  life  and  death.  Even  monasticism,  harshly  as  we 
may  now  judge  it,  arose  in  part  at  least,  through  the 
desire  to  "endure  hardness;"  only  it  turned  aside 
from  the  hardness  appointed  in  the  world  without,  to 
choose,  and  ere  long  to  make,  a  hardness  of  its  own  ; 
and  then,  self-seeking,  and  therefore  anti-Christian, 
it  fell.  Amid  all  its  actual  corruption,  the  Church 
stands  forth  a  living  witness,  by  its  ritual  and  its 
sacraments,  to  this  fundamental  truth  of  the  Cross ; 
and  ever  and  anon  from  its  deepest  degradation  there 
emerges,  clear  and  sharp,  some  figure  bending  under 
this  noblest  burden  of  our  doom — some  Savonarola 
or  St.  Francis  charged  with  the  one  thought  of  truth 
and  right,  of  the  highest  truth  and  right,  to  be  fol- 
lowed, if  need  were,  through  the  darkness  of  death 
and  of  hell. 

Perhaps  few  ages  have  needed  more  than  our  own 
to  have  this  fundamental  principle  of  Christian  ethics 
— this  doctrine  of  the  Cross — sharply  and  strongly 
proclaimed  to  it.  Our  vast  advances  in  physical 
science  tend,  in  the  first  instance  at  least,  to  withdraw 
regard  from  the  higher  requirements  of  life.  Even 
the  progress  of  commerce  and  navigation,  at  once 


Introductory — Modern  Tlicology  5 

multiplying  the  means  and  extending  the  sphere  of 
physical  and  aesthetic  enjoyment,  aids  to  intensify  the 
appetite  for  these.  Systems  of  so-called  philosophy 
start  undoubtingly  with  the  axiom  that  happiness  is 
the  one  aim  of  man  :  and  with  at  least  some  of  these 
happiness  is  simply  coincident  with  physical  well- 
being.  Political  Economy  aims  as  undoubtingly  to 
act  on  the  principle,  "the  greatest  possible  happiness 
of  the  greatest  possible  number:"  and  perhaps,  as 
Political  Economy  claims  to  deal  with  man  in  his 
physical  life  only,  it  were  unreasonable  to  expect  from 
it  regard  to  aught  above  this.  Our  current  and  popu- 
lar literature — Fiction,  Poetry,  Essays  on  social  rela- 
tions— is  emphatically  a  literature  of  enjoyment,  min- 
istering to  the  various  excitements  of  pleasure,  won- 
der, suspense,  or  pain.  And  last,  and  in  some  respects 
most  serious  of  all,  our  popular  theology  has  largely 
conformed  to  the  spirit  of  the  age.  Representative  of 
a  debased  and  emasculated  Christianity,  it  attacks  our 
humanity  at  its  very  core.  It  rings  out  to  us,  with 
wearisome  iteration,  as  our  one  great  concern,  the 
saving  of  our  own  souls :  degrades  the  religion  of  the 
Cross  into  a  slightly-refined  and  long-sighted  selfish- 
ness: and  makes  our  following  Him  who  "pleased 
not  Himself"  to  consist  in  doing  just  enough  to 
escape  what  it  calls  the  pains  of  hell — to  win  what 
it  calls  the  joys  of  heaven. 

This  is  the  dark  side  of  the  picture ;  but  it  has  its 
bright  side,  too.  These  advances  of  science,  these 
extensions  of  commerce,  these  philosophies,  even 


6  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot *s  Works 

where  they  are  falsely  so  called,  this  Political  Econ- 
omy, which  from  its  very  nature  must  first  "  labor 
for  the  meat  that  perisheth," — these  are  all  God's  ser- 
vants and  man's  ministers  still — the  ministers  of  man's 
higher  and  nobler  life.  Consciously  or  unconsciously, 
they  are  working  to  raise  from  myriads  burdens  of 
poverty,  care,  ceaseless  and  fruitless  toil,  under  the 
pressure  of  which  all  higher  aspiration  is  well-nigh 
impossible.  Sanitary  reform  in  itself  may  mean 
nothing  more  than  better  drainage,  fresher  air,  freer 
light,  more  abundant  water :  to  the  "  Governor  among 
the  nations  "  it  means  lessened  impossibilty  that  men 
should  live  to  Him. 

If  in  few  ages  the  great  bulk  and  the  most  popular 
portion  of  literature  has  more  prostituted  itself  to 
purposes  of  sensational  or  at  most  aesthetic  enjoy- 
ment, it  is  at  least  as  doubtful  if  in  any  previous  age 
our  highest  literature  has  more  emphatically  and 
persistently  devoted  itself  to  proclaiming  this  great 
doctrine  of  the  Cross.  Sometimes  directly  and 
explicitly,  oftener  by  implication,  this  is  the  ultimate 
theme  of  those  who  are  most  deeply  influencing  the 
spirit  of  the  time.  Our  finest  and  most  widely 
recognized  pulpit  oratory  is  at  home  here,  and  only 
here;  Maurice  and  Arnold,  Trench  and  Vaughan, 
Robertson  and  Stanley,  James  Martineau  and  Seeley , 
Thirlwall  and  Wilberforce,  Kingsley  and  Brooke, 
Caird  and  Tulloch,  different  in  form,  in  much  antag- 
onistic in  what  is  called  opinion,  are  of  one  mind 
and  heart  on  this.     The  thought  underlying  all  their 


Introductory — Higher  Modern  Theology  7 

thoughts  of  man  is  that  "  higher  than  love  of  happi- 
ness "  in  humanity  which  expresses  the  true  link 
between  man  and  God.  The  practical  doctrine  that 
with  them  underlies  all  others  is,  "  Love  not  pleasure 
— love  God.  Love  Him  not  alone  in  the  light  and 
amid  the  calm,  but  through  the  blackness  and  the 
storm.  Though  He  hide  Himself  in  the  thick  dark- 
ness, yet"  give  thanks  at  remembrance  of  His  holi- 
ness. "  Though  He  slay  thee,  yet  trust  still  in  Him." 
The  hope  to  which  they  call  us  is  not,  save  second- 
arily and  incidentally,  the  hope  of  a  great  exhaust- 
less  future.  It  is  the  hope  of  a  true  life  now,  strug- 
gling on  and  up  through  hardness  and  toil  and  battle, 
careless  though  its  crown  be  the  crown  of  thorns. 

Even  evangelicism  indirectly,  in  great  degree 
unconsciously,  bears  witness  to  the  truth  through 
its  demand  of  absolute  self-abnegation  before  God : 
though  the  inversion  of  the  very  idea  of  Him  funda- 
mentally involved  in  its  scheme  makes  the  self-abne- 
gation no  longer  that  of  the  son,  but  of  the  slave ; 
includes  in  it  the  denial  of  that  law  which  Himself 
has  written  on  our  hearts  ;  and  would  substitute  our 
subjection  to  an  arbitrary  despotism  for  our  being 
"  made  partakers  of  His  holiness."  One  of  the  stern- 
est and  most  consistent  of  Calvinistic  theologians, 
Jonathan  Edwards,  in  one  of  his  works  expresses 
his  willingness  to  be  damned  for  the  glory  of  God, 
and  to  rejoice  in  his  own  damnation  :  with  a  strange, 
almost  incredible,  obliquity  of  moral  and  spiritual 
insight  failing  to  perceive  that  in  thus  losing  himself 


8  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

in  the  infinite  of  holy  Love  lies  the  very  essence  of 
human  blessedness,  that  this,  and  this  alone,  is  in 
very  truth  his  "  eternal  life." 

Among  what  may  be  called  Essayists,  two  by 
general  consent  stand  out  as  most  deeply  penetrating 
and  informing  the  spirit  of  the  age — Carlyle  and 
Ruskin.  To  the  former,  brief  reference  has  already 
been  made.  In  the  work  then  quoted  from,  one  truth 
has  prominence  above  all  others:  that  with  the  will's 
acceptance  of  happiness  as  the  aim  of  life  begins  the 
true  degradation  of  humanity;  and  that  then  alone 
true  life  dawns  upon  man  when  truth  and  right  begin 
to  stand  out  as  the  first  objects  of  his  regard.  Never 
since  has  Carlyle's  strong  rough  grasp  relaxed  its 
hold  of  this  truth  ;  and  howsoever  in  later  works,  in 
what  are  intended  as  biographical  illustrations  of  it, 
he  may  seem  to  confuse  mere  strength  and  energy 
with  righteousness  of  will,  and  thence  to  confound 
outward  and  visible  success  with  vital  achievement, 
that  strength  and  energy  are  always  in  his  eyes, 
fighting  or  enduring  against  some  phase  of  the 
many-headed  hydra  of  wrong. 

Of  Ruskin  it  seems  almost  superfluous  to  speak. 
They  have  read  him  to  little  purpose  who  have  not 
felt  that  all  his  essays  and  criticisms  in  art,  all  his  ex- 
positions in  social  and  political  science,  are  essentially 
unified  by  one  animating  and  pervading  truth  :  the 
truth  that  to  man's  moral  relations,  or,  in  other  words, 
the  developing  and  perfecting  in  him  of  that  Divine 
image  in  which  he  is  made, — all  things  else,  joy, 


Introductory — Ruskin —  Tennyson  9 

beauty,  life  itself,  are  of  account  only  to  the  degree 
in  which  they  are  consciously  used  to  subserve  that 
higher  life.  His  ultimate  standard  of  value  to  which 
everything,  alike  in  art  and  in  social  and  political 
relations,  is  referred,  is — not  success,  not  enjoyment, 
whether  sensuous,  sentimental,  or  aesthetic,  but — the 
measure  in  which  may  thereby  be  trained  up  that 
higher  life  of  humanity.  Art  is  to  him  God's  minister, 
not  when  she  is  simply  true  to  nature,  but  solely  when 
true  to  nature  in  such  forms  and  phases  as  shall  tend 
to  bring  man  nearer  to  moral  truth,  beauty,  and  purity. 
The  Ios  and  Ariadnes  of  the  debased  Italian  schools, 
the  boors  of  Teniers,  the  Madonnas  of  Guido,  are 
truer  to  one  phase  of  nature  than  are  Fr«a  Angelico's 
angels,  or  Tintoret's  Crucifixion.  But  that  nature  is 
humanity  as  degraded  by  sense  ;  and  therefore  the 
measure  of  their  truthfulness  is  for  him  also  the  mea-  * 
sure  of  their  debasement. 

In  poetry,  the  key-note  so  firmly  struck  by  Words- 
worth in  his  noble  "  Ode  to  Duty  "  has  been  as  firmly 
and  more  delicately  caught  up  by  other  singers ;  who, 
moreover,  have  seen  more  clearly  than  Wordsworth  , 
did,  that  it  is  for  faith,  not  for  sight,  that  duty  wears 

"  The  Godhead's  most  benignant  grace  ;" 

for  the  path  along  which  she  leads  is  inevitably  on  earth 
steep,  rugged,  and  toilsome.    Take  almost  any  one  of 
Tennyson's  more  serious  poems,  and  it  will  be  found 
pervaded  by  the  thought  of  life  as  to  be  fulfilled  and 
perfected  only  through  moral  endurance  and  struggle. 


10  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 


o 


"  Ulysses  "  is  no  restjess,  aimless  wanderer  ;  he  is 
driven  forth  from  inaction  and  security  by  that  neces- 
sity which  impels  the  higher  life,  once  begun  within, 
to  press  on  toward  its  perfecting  this  all-possible 
sorrow,  peril,  and  fear.  "  The  Lotos-eaters  "  are  no 
mere  legendary  myth  :  they  shadow  forth  what  the 
lower  instincts  of  our  humanity  are  ever  urging  us  all 
to  seek — ease  and  release  from  the  ceaseless  struggle 
against  wrong,  the  ceaseless  straining  on  toward  right. 
"  In  Memoriam  "  is  the  record  of  love  "  making  per- 
fect through  suffering  :  "  struggling  on  through  the 
valley  of  the  shadow  of  death  toward  the  far-off,  faith- 
seen  light  "behind  the  veil."  "The  Vision  of  Sin" 
portrays  to  us  humanity  choosing  enjoyment  as  its 
only  aim  ;  and  of  necessity  sinking  into  degradation 
so  profound,  that  even  the  large  heart  and  clear  eye 
of  the  poet  can  but  breathe  out  in  sad  bewilderment, 
"  Is  there  any  hope?  " — can  but  dimly  see,  far  off  over 
the  darkness,  "  God  make  Himself  an  awful  rose  of 
dawn."  In  one  of  the  most  profound  of  all  His  crea- 
tions— "The  Palace  of  Art" — we  have  presented  to 
us  the  soul  surrounding  itself  with  everything  fair  and 
glad,  and  in  itself  pure,  not  primarily  to  the  eye,  but 
to  the  mind  :  attempting  to  achieve  its  destiny  and  to 
fulfil  its  life  in  the  perfections  of  intellectual  beauty 
and  aesthetic  delight.  But  the  palace  of  art,  made  the 
palace  of  the  soul,  becomes  its  dungeon-house,  self- 
generating  and  filling  fast  with  all  loathsome  and 
deathly  shapes  ;  and  the  heaven  of  intellectual  joy 
becomes  at  last  a  more  penetrative  and  intenser  hell. 


Introductory — Tennyson  1 1 

The  "  Idylls  of  the  King  "  are  but  exquisite  variations 
on  the  one  note — that  the  only  true  and  high  life  of 
humanity  is  the  life  of  full  and  free  obedience  ;  and 
that  such  life  on  earth  becomes  of  necessity  one  of 
struggle,  sorrow,  outward  loss  and  apparent  failure. 
In  "  Vivien  " — the  most  remarkable  of  them  all  for  the 
subtlety  of  its  conception  and  the  delicacy  of  its  execu- 
tion,— the  picture  is  perhaps  the  darkest  and  saddest 
time  can  show — that  of  a  nature  rich  to  the  utmost 
in  all  lower  wisdom  of  the  mind,  struggling  long  and 
apparently  truly  against  the  flesh,  yet  all  the  while 
dallying  with  the  foul  temptation,  till  the  flesh 
prevails  ;  and  in  a  moment,  swift  and  sure  as  the 
lightning,  moral  and  spiritual  death  swoops  down, 
and  we  see  the  lost  one  no  more. 

Many  other  illustrations  might  be  given  from  our 
noblest  and  truest  poetry — from  the  works  of  the 
Brownings,  the  "  Saints'  Tragedy"  of  Charles  Kings- 
ley,  the  dramatic  poems  of  Henry  Taylor — of  the 
extent  to  which  it  is  vitally,  even  where  not  formally 
Christian  ;  the  extent  to  which  the  truth  of  the  Cross 
has  transfused  it,  and  become  one  chief  source  of  its 
depth  and  power.  But  we  must  hasten  on  to  our 
more  immediate  object  in  these  remarks. 

Those  who  read  works  of  fiction  merely  for  amuse- 
ment, may  be  surprised  that  it  should  be  thought 
possible  they  could  be  vehicles  for  conveying  to  us 
the  deepest  practical  truth  of  Christianity, — that  the 
highest  life  of  man  only  begins  when  he  begins  to 
accept  and  to  bear  the  Cross  ;  and  that  the  conscious 


1 2  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

pursuit  of  happiness  as  his  highest  aim  tends  inevit- 
ably to  degrade  and  enslave  him.  Even  those  who 
read  novels  more  thoughtfully,  who  recognize  in  them 
a  great  moral  force  acting  for  good  or  evil  on  the  age, 
may  be  startled  to  find  George  Eliot  put  forward  as 
the  representative  of  this  higher-toned  fiction,  and 
as  entitled  to  take  place  beside  any  of  those  we  have 
named  for  the  depth  and  force,  the  consistency  and 
persistence,  with  which  she  has  labored  to  set  before 
us  the  Christian,  and  therefore  the  only  exhaustively 
true,  ideal  of  life. 

Yet  a  careful  examination  will,  we  are  satisfied, 
show  that  from  her  first  appearance  before  the  public, 
this  thought,  and  the  specific  purpose  of  this  teaching, 
have  never  been  absent  from  the  writer's  mind  ;  that 
it  may  be  defined  as  the  central  aim  of  all  her  works  ; 
and  that  it  gathers  in  force,  condensation,  and  power 
throughout  the  series.  Other  qualities  George  Eliot 
has,  that  would  of  themselves  entitle  herto  a  very  high 
place  among  the  teachers  of  the  time.  In  largeness 
of  Christian  charity,  in  breadth  of  human  sympathy, 
in  tenderness  toward  all  human  frailty  that  is  not 
vitally  base  and  self-seeking,  in  subtle  power  of  finding 
"a  soul  of  goodness  even  in  things  apparently  evil,"  she 
-has  not  many  equals,  certainly  no  superior,  among  the 
writers  of  the  day.  Throughout  all  her  works  we  shall 
look  in  vain  for  one  trace  of  the  fierce,  self-opinion- 
ative  arrogance  of  Carlyle,  or  the  narrow,  dogmatic 
intolerance  of  Ruskin  :  though  we  shall  look  as  vainly 
for  one  word  or  sign  that  shall,  on  the  mere  ground 


Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  1 3 

of  intellectual  power,  energy,  and  ultimate  success, 
condone  the  unprincipled  ambition  of  a  Frederick,  so- 
called  the  Great,  and  exalt  him  into  a  hero  ;  or  find 
in  the  cold  heart  and  mean,  sordid  soul  of  a  Turner 
an  ideal,  because  one  of  those  strange  physiological 
freaks  that  now  and  then  startle  the  world,  the  artist's 
temperament  and  artist's  skill,  were  his  beyond  those 
of  any  man  of  his  age.  But  as  our  object  here  is  to 
attempt  placing  her  before  the  reader  as  asserting 
and  illustrating  the  highest  life  of  humanity,  as  a 
true  preacher  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Cross,  even 
when  least  formally  so,  we  leave  these  features,  as 
well  as  her  position  as  an  artist,  untouched  on,  the 
rather  that  they  have  all  been  already  discussed  by 
previous  critics. 

The  "  Scenes  of  Clerical  Life,"  delicately  outlined 
as  they  are,  still  profess  to  be  but  sketches.  In 
them,  however,  what  we  have  assumed  to  be  the 
great  moral  aim  of  the  writer  comes  distinctly  out ; 
and  even  within  the  series  itself  gathers  in  clearness 
and  power.  Self-sacrifice  as  the  Divine  law  of  life, 
and  its  only  true  fulfilment;  self-sacrifice,  not  in  some 
ideal  sphere  sought  out  for  ourselves  in  the  vain  spirit 
of  self-pleasing,  but  wherever  God  has  placed  us, 
amid  homely,  petty  anxieties,  loves,  and  sorrows  ; 
the  aiming  at  the  highest  attainable  good  in  our 
own  place,  irrespective  of  all  results  of  joy  or 
sorrow,  of  apparent  success  or  failure, — such  is  the 
lesson  that  begins  to  be  conveyed  to  us  in  these 
"  Scenes." 


14  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

The  lesson  comes  to  us  in  the  quiet  unselfish  love, 
the  sweet  hourly  self-devotion  of  the  "Milly"  of 
Amos  Barton,  so  touchingly  free  and  full  that  it  never 
recognizes  itself  as  self-devotion  at  all.  In  "  Mr. 
GilfiTs  Love-Story"  we  have  it  taught  affirmatively 
through  the  deep  unselfishness  of  Mr.  GilfiTs  love  to 
Tina,  and  his  willingness  to  offer  up  even  this,  the  one 
hope  and  joy  of  his  life,  upon  the  altar  of  duty ;  nega- 
tively, through  the  hard,  cold,  callous,  self-pleasing 
of  Captain  Wybrow — a  type  of  character  which,  never 
repeated,  is  reproduced  with  endless  variations  and 
modifications  in  nearly  all  the  author's  subsequent 
works.  It  is,  however,  in  "  Janet's  Repentance  "  that 
the  power  of  the  author  is  put  most  strongly  forth, 
and  also  that  what  we  conceive  to  be  the  vital  aim  of 
her  works  is  most  definitely  and  firmly  pronounced. 
Here  also  we  have  illustrated  that  breadth  of  nature, 
that  power  of  discerning  the  true  and  good  under 
whatsoever  external  form  it  may  wear,  which  is  almost 
a  necessary  adjunct  of  the  author's  true  and  large 
ideal  of  the  Christian  life.  She  goes,  it  might  almost 
seem,  out  of  her  way  to  select,  from  that  theological 
school  with  which  her  whole  nature  is  most  entirely 
at  dissonance,  one  of  her  most  touching  illustrations 
of  a  life  struggling  on  towards  its  highest  through 
contempt,  sorrow,  and  death.  That  narrowest  of  all 
sectarianisms,  which  arrogates  to  itself  the  name 
Evangelical,  and  which  holds  up  as  the  first  aim  to 
every  man  the  saving  of  his  own  individual  soul,  has 
furnished  to  her  Mr.  Trvan,  whose  life  is  based  on 


Scenes  of  Clerical  Life  1 5 

the  principle  laid  down  by  the  one  great  Evangelist, 
"  He  that  loveth  his  soul  shall  lose  it ;  he  that  hateth 
his  soul  shall  keep  it  unto  life  eternal."* 

Mr.  Tryan,  as  first  represented  to  us,  is  not  an 
engaging  figure.  Narrow  and  sectarian,  full  of  many 
uncharities,  to  a  great  extent  vain  and  self-conscious, 
glad  to  be  flattered  and  idolized  by  men  and  women, 
by  no  means  of  large  calibre  or  lofty  standard — it 
might  well  seem  impossible  to  invest  such  a  figure 
with  one  heroic  element.  Yet  it  is  before  this  man 
we  are  constrained  to  bow  down  in  reverence,  as 
before  one  truer,  greater,  nobler  than  ourselves ;  and 
as  we  stand  with  Janet  Dempster  beside  the  closing 
grave,  we  may  well  feel  that  one  is  gone  from  among 
us  whose  mere  presence  made  it  less  hard  to  fight  our 
battle  against  "the  world,  the  flesh,  and  the  devil." 
The  explanation  of  the  paradox  is  not  far  to  seek. 
The  principle  which  animated  the  life  now  withdrawn 
from  sight — which  raised  it  above  all  its  littlenesses 
and  made  it  a  witness  for  God  and  His  Christ,  con- 
straining even  the  scoffers  to  feel  the  presence  of  "  Him 
who  is  invisible  " — this  principle  was  self-sacrifice. 
So  at  least  the  imperfections  of  human  speech  lead 

*  The  translators  of  our  English  Bible,  possibly  perplexed  by  the 
seeming  paradox  involved  in  these  remarkable  words,  have  taken 
an  unwarrantable  freedom  with  the  original,  in  rendering  the  Greek 
(jwp/.  invariably  the  synonym  of  the  soul,  the  spiritual  and  undying 
element  in  man,  by  "  life" — the  Cw>/  of  all  Greek  literature  so- 
called,  sacred  and  profane  alike;  the  synonym  of  that  life  which 
is  his  in  common  with  the  beast  of  the  field  and  the  tree  of  the 
forest. 


1 6  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

us  to  call  that  which  stands  in  antagonism  to  self- 
pleasing;  but  before  Him  to  whom  all  things  are 
open,  what  we  so  call  is  the  purification  and  exalta- 
tion of  that  self  in  us  which  is  the  highest  created 
reflex  of  His  image — the  growing  up  of  it  into  His 
likeness  forever. 

We  may  here,  once  for  all,  and  very  briefly ,  advert 
to  one  specialty  of  the  author's  works,  which,  if  we 
are  right  in  our  interpretation  of  their  central  moral 
import,  flows  almost  necessarily  as  a  corollary  from 
it.  In  each  of  these  sketches  one  principal  figure 
is  blotted  out  just  when  our  regards  are  fixed  most 
strongly  on  it.  Milly,  Tina,  and  Mr.  Tryan  all  die, 
at  what  may  well  appear  the  crisis  of  life  and  destiny 
for  themselves  or  others.  There  is  in  this — if  not 
in  specific  intention,  certainly  in  practical  teaching — 
something  deeper  and  more  earnest  than  any  mere 
artistic  trick  of  pathos — far  more  real  than  the  weary 
commonplace  of  suggesting  to  us  any  so-called  im- 
mortality as  the  completion  and  elucidation  of  earthly 
life  ;  far  profounder  and  simpler,  too,  than  the  only 
less  trite  commonplace  of  hinting  to  us  the  mystery 
of  God's  ways  in  what  we  call  untimely  death.  The 
true  import  of  it  we  take  to  be  the  separation  of  all 
the  world  calls  success  or  reward  from  the  life  that 
is  thus  seeking  its  highest  fulfilment.  In  conformity 
-with  the  average  doctrine  of  "  compensation,"  Amos 
Barton  should  have  appeared  before  us  at  last 
installed  in  a  comfortable  living,  much  respected  by 
his  flock,  and  on  good  terms  with  his  brethren  and 


Adam  Bede  ly 

well-to-do  neighbors  around.  With  a  truer  and 
deeper  wisdom,  the  author  places  him  before  us  in 
that  brief  after-glimpse  still  a  poor,  care-worn,  bowed- 
down  man,  and  the  sweet  daughter-face  by  his  side 
shows  the  premature  lines  of  anxiety  and  sorrow. 
Love,  anguish,  and  death,  working  their  true  fruits 
within,  being  no  success  or  achievement  that  the  eye 
can  note.  By  all  the  principles  of  "  poetic  justice," 
Mr.  Tryan  ought  to  have  recovered  and  married  Janet; 
under  the  influence  of  her  larger  nature  to  have 
shaken  off  his  narrownesses  ;  to  have  lived  down  all 
contempt  and  opposition,  and  become  the  respected 
influential  incumbent  of  the  town  ;  and  in  due  time 
to  have  toned  down  from  his  "  enthusiasm  of  human- 
ity "  into  the  simply  earnest,  hard-working  and  rather 
commonplace  town  rector.  Better,  because  truer,  as 
it  is.  Only  in  the  earlier  dawn  of  this  higher  life  of 
the  soul,  either  in  the  race  or  in  the  individual  man; 
only  in  the  days  of  the  Isaacs  and  Jacobs  of  our 
young  humanity,  though  not  with  the  Abrahams,  the 
Moses',  or  the  Joshuas  even  then  ;  only  when  the 
soul  first  begins  to  apprehend  that  its  true  relation 
to  God  is  to  be  realized  only  through  the  Cross — 
is  there  conscience  and  habitual  "  respect  unto  the 
recompense  "  of  any  reward. 

In  "Adam  Bede,"  the  first  of  George  Eliot's  more 
elaborate. works,  the  illustrations  of  the  great  moral 
purpose  we  have  assigned  to  her  are  so  numerous 
and  varied,  that  it  is  not  easy  to  select  from  among 
them.     On  the  one  hand,  Dinah  Morris — one  of  the 


1 8  77?^  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

most  exquisitely  serene  and  beautiful  creations  of 
fiction — and  Seth  and  Adam  Bede  present  to  us, 
variously  modified,  the  aspect  of  that  life  which  is 
aiming  towards  the  highest  good.  On  the  other 
hand,  Arthur  Donnithorne  and  Hetty  Sorrel — poor 
little  vain  and  shallow-hearted  Hetty — bring  before 
us  the  meanness,  the  debasement,  and,  if  unarrested, 
the  spiritual  and  remediless  death  inevitably  associ- 
ated with  and  accruing  from  that  "self-pleasing" 
which,  under  one  form  or  other,  is  the  essence  of  all 
evil  and  sin.  Of  those,  Arthur  Donnithorne  and 
Adam  Bede  seems  to  us  the  two  who  are  most 
sharply  and  subtilely  contrasted  ;  and  to  those  we 
shall  confine  our  remarks. 

In  Arthur  Donnithorne,  the  slight  sketch  placed 
before  us  in  Captain  Wybrow  is  elaborated  into 
minute  completeness,  and  at  the  same  time  freed  from 
all  that  made  Wybrow  even  superficially  repellent. 
Handsome,  accomplished  and  gentlemanly ;  loving 
and  lovable  ;  finding  his  keenest  enjoyment  in  the 
enjoyment  of  others  ;  irreproachable  in  life,  and  free 
from  everything  bearing  the  semblance  of  vice, — 
what  more  could  the  most  exacting  fictionist  desire 
to  make  up  his  ideal  hero  ?  Yet,  without  ceasing  to 
be  all  thus  portrayed,  he  scatters  desolation  and  crime 
in  his  path.  He  does  this,  not  through  any  revulsion 
of  being  in  himself,  but  in  virtue  of  that  very  principle 
of  action  from  which  his  lovableness  proceeds.  Of 
duty  simply  as  duty,  of  right  solely  as  right,  his 
knowledge  is  yet  to  come.     Essentially,  his  ideal  of 


Adam  Bcde  19 

life  as  yet  is  "  self-pleasing."  This  impels  him,  con- 
stituted as  he  is,  to  strive  that  he  shall  stand  well  with 
all.  This  almost  necessitates  that  he  shall  be  kindly, 
genial,  loving ;  enjoying  the  joy  and  well-being  of  all 
around  him,  and  therefore  lovable.  But  this  also 
assures  that  his  struggle  against  temptation  shall  be 
weak  and  vacillating;  and  that  when,  through  his 
paltering  with  it,  it  culminates,  he  shall  at  once  fall 
before  it.  The  wood  scene  with  Adam  Bede  still  fur- 
ther illustrates  the  same  characteristics.  This  man, 
so  genial  and  kindly,  rages  fiercely  in  his  heart  against 
him  whom  he  has  unwittingly  wronged.  Frank  and 
open,  apparently  the  very  soul  of  honor,  he  shuffles 
and  lies  like  a  coward  and  a  knave ;  and  this  in  no  per- 
sonal fear,  but  because  he  shrinks  to  lose  utterly  that 
goodwill  and  esteem  of  others, — of  Adam  in  partic- 
ular, because  Adam  constrains  his  own  high  esteem, 
which  are  to  him  the  reflection  of  his  own  self- worship. 
Repentance  comes  to  him  at  last,  because  conscience 
has  never  in  him  been  entirely  overlaid  and  crushed. 
It  comes  when  the  whirlwind  of  anguish  has  swept 
over  him,  scattered  all  the  flimsy  mists  of  self-excuse 
in  which  self-love  had  sought  to  veil  his  wrong- 
doing, and  bowed  him  to  the  dust ;  but  who  shall 
estimate  the  remediless  and  everlasting  loss  already 
sustained? 

We  have  spoken  of  Captain  Wybrow  as  the  pro- 
totype of  Arthur.  He  is  so  in  respect  of  both  being 
swayed  by  that  vital  sin  of  self-pleasing  to  which  all 
wrong-doing    ultimately   refers   itself;  but    that    in 


20  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot" s  Works 

Arthur  the  corruption  of  life  at  its  source  is  not 
complete,  is  shown  throughout  the  whole  story.  The 
very  form  of  action  which  self-love  assumes  in  him, 
tells  that  self  though  dominant  is  not  yet  supreme. 
It  refers  itself  to  others.  It  absolutely  requires 
human  sympathy.  So  long  as  the  man  lives  to  some 
extent  in  the  opinion  and  affections  of  his  brother 
men, — so  long  as  he  is  even  uncomfortable  under  the 
sense  of  being  shut  out  from  these  otherwise  than  as 
the  being  so  shall  affect  his  own  interests, — we  may 
be  quite  sure  he  is  not  wholly  lost.  The  difference 
between  the  two  men  is  still  more  clearly  shown  when 
they  are  brought  face  to  face  with  the  result  of  their 
wrong-doing.  With  each  there  is  sorrow,  but  in 
Wybrow,  and  still  more  vividly  as  we  shall  see  in 
Tito  Melema,  it  is  the  sorrow  of  self-worship  only. 
No  thought  of  the  wronged  one  otherwise  than  as  an 
obstacle  and  embarrassment,  no  thought  of  the  wrong 
simply  as  a  wrong,  can  touch  him.  This  sorrow  is 
merely  remorse,  "  the  sorrow  of  the  world  which 
worketh  death."  Arthur,  too,  is  suddenly  called  to 
confront  the  misery  and  ruin  he  has  wrought ;  but 
in  him,  self  then  loses  its  ascendancy.  There  is  no 
attempt  to  plead  that  he  was  the  tempted  as  much 
as  the  tempter ;  and  no  care  now  as  to  what  others 
shall  think  or  say  about  him.  All  thought  is  for  the 
wretched  Hetty ;  and  all  energy  is  concentrated  on 
the  one  present  object,  of  arresting  so  far  as  it  can 
be  arrested  the  irremediable  loss  to  her.  The  wrong 
stands  up  before  him  in  its  own  nakedness  as  a  wrong. 


Adam  Bedc  21 

This  is  repentance  ;  and  with  repentance  restoration 
becomes  possible  and  begins. 

Adam  Bede  contrasts  at  nearly  every  point  with 
Arthur  Donnithorne.  Lovable  is  nearly  the  last 
epithet  we  think  of  applying  to  him.  Hard  almost 
to  cruelty  toward  his  sinning  father ;  hard  almost 
to  contemptuousness  toward  his  fond,  foolish  mother ; 
bitterly  hard  toward  his  young  master  and  friend,  on 
the  first  suspicion  of  personal  wrong ;  savagely  vin- 
dictive, long  and  fiercely  unforgiving,  when  he  knows 
that  wrong  accomplished  ; — these  may  well  seem 
things  irreconcilable  with  any  true  fulfilment  of  that 
Christian  life  whose  great  law  is  love.  Yet,  examined 
more  narrowly,  they  approve  themselves  as  nearly 
associated  with  the  larger  fulness  of  that  life.  They 
are  born  of  the  same  spirit  which  said  of  old,  "  Woe 
unto  you,  Scribes  and  Pharisees,  hypocrites  !  "  ful- 
filments, howsoever  imperfect,  of  that  true  and  deep 
"law  of  resentment"  which  modern  sentimentalism 
has  all  but  expunged  from  the  Christian  code.  The 
hardness  is  essentially  against  the  wrong-doing,  not 
against  the  doer  of  it ;  and  against  rather  as  it  affects 
others  than  as  it  burdens,  worries,  or  overshadows  his 
own  life.  It  subsists  in  and  springs  from  the  inten- 
sity with  which,  in  a  nature  robust  and  energetic  in 
no  ordinary  degree,  right  and  wrong  have  asserted 
themselves  as  the  realities  of  existence.  Even  Seth 
can  be  more  tolerant  than  Adam,  because  the  gentle, 
placid  moral  beauty  of  his  nature  is,  so  far  as  this 
may  ever  be,  the  result  of  temperament ;  while  in 


22  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

Adam  whatever  has  been  attained  has  been  won 
through  inward  struggle  and  self-conquest. 

In  the  "Mill  on  the  Floss,"  the  moral  interest  of 
the  whole  drama  is  concentrated  to  a  very  great 
degree  on  Maggie  Tulliver  ;  and  in  her  is  also  main- 
ly concentrated  the  representative  struggle  between 
good  and  evil,  the  spirit  of  the  Cross  and  that  of  the 
world  ;  for  Stephen  Guest  is  little  more  than  the 
objective  form  under  which  the  latent  evil  of  her  own 
humanity  assails  her.  Her  life  is  the  field  upon  which 
we  see  the  great  conflict  waging  between  the  elements 
of  spiritual  life  and  spiritual  death  ;  swaying  amid 
heart-struggle  and  pain,  now  toward  victory,  now 
toward  defeat,  till  at  last  all  seems  lost.  Then  at 
one  rebound  the  strong  brave  spirit  recovers  itself, 
and  takes  up  the  full  burden  of  its  cross ;  sees  and 
accepts  the  present  right  though  the  heart  is  break- 
ing ;  and  the  end  is  victory  crowned  and  sealed  by 
death. 

From  her  first  appearance  as  a  child,  those  ele- 
ments of  humanity  are  most  prominent  in  her  which, 
unguided  and  uncontrolled,  are  most  fraught  with 
danger  to  the  higher  life ;  and  for  her  there  is  no 
real  outward  guidance  or  control  whatever.  The 
passionate  craving  for  human  sympathy  and  love, 
which  meets  no  fuller  response  than  from  the  rude 
instinctive  fondness  of  her  father  and  the  carefully- 
regulated  affection  of  her  brother,  on  the  one  hand 
prepares  her  for  the  storm  of  passion,  and  on  the 
other,  chilled  and  thrown  back  by  neglect  and  refusal, 


Mill  on  the  Floss  23 

threatens  her  with  equal  danger  of  hardness  and  self- 
inclusion.  The  strong  artist  temperament,  the  power 
of  spontaneous  and  intense  enjoyment  in  everything 
fair  and  glad  to  the  eye  and  ear,  repressed  by  the 
uncongenial  accessories  around  her,  tends  to  con- 
centrate her  existence  in  a  realm  of  mere  imaginative 
life,  where,  if  it  be  the  only  life,  the  diviner  part  ol 
our  being  can  find  no  sustenance.  This  danger  is 
for  her  the  greater  and  more  insidious,  because  in 
her  the  sensuous,  so  strongly  developed,  is  refined 
from  all  its  grossness  by  the  presence  of  imagination 
and  thought. 

When  at  last,  amid  the  desolation  that  has  come 
upon  her  home,  and  the  increasing  bareness  of  all  the 
accessories  of  her  young  life,  its  deeper  needs  and 
higher  aspirations  awaken  to  definite  purpose  and 
seek  definite  action,  the  direction  they  take  is  toward 
a  hard,  stern  asceticism,  cramping  up  all  life  and 
energy  within  a  narrow  round  of  drudgeries  and 
privations.  She  strives,  as  many  an  earnest  impas- 
sioned nature  like  hers  has  done  in  similar  circum- 
stances, to  fashion  her  own  cross,  and  to  make  it  as 
hard  as  may  be  to  bear.  She  would  deny  to  herself 
the  very  beauty  of  earth  and  sky,  the  music  of  birds 
and  rippling  waters,  and  everthing  sweet  and  glad, 
as  temptations  and  snares.  From  all  this  she  is 
brought  back  by  Philip.  But  he,  touching  as  he  is 
in  the  humility  and  tender  unselfishness  of  his  love, 
is  too  exclusively  of  the  artist  temperament  to  give 
direction  or  sustainment  to  the  deeper  moral  require- 


24  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

ments  of  her  being.  He  may  win  her  back  to  the 
love  of  beauty  and  the  sense  of  joy;  but  he  is  not 
the  one  to  stand  by  her  side  when  the  stern  conflict 
between  pleasure  and  right,  sense  and  soul,  the 
world  and  God,  is  being  fought  out  within  her. 

With  her  introduction  to  Stephen  Guest,  that  con- 
flict assumes  specific  and  tangible  form  ;  and  it  has 
emphatically  to  be  fought  out  alone.  All  external 
circumstances  are  against  her;  even  Lucy's  sweet 
unjealous  temper,  and  Tom's  bitter  hatred,  combining 
with  Philip's  painful  self-consciousness  to  keep  the 
safeguard  of  his  presence  less  constantly  at  her  side. 
At  last  the  crowning  temptation  comes.  Without 
design,  by  a  surprise  on  the  part  of  both,  the  step  has 
been  taken  which  may  well  seem  irretraceable. 
Going  back  from  it  is  not  merely  going  back  from  joy 
and  hope,  but  going  back  to  deeper  loneliness  than 
she  has  ever  known  ;  and  going  back  also  to  misun- 
derstanding, shame  and  life-long  repentance.  But 
conscience,  the  imperative  requirements  of  the  higher 
life  within,  have  resumed  their  power.  There  is  no 
paltering  with  that  inward  voice ;  no  possibility  but 
the  acceptance  of  the  present  urgent  right, — the 
instant  fleeing  from  the  wrong,  though  with  it  is 
bound  up  all  of  enjoyment  life  can  know.  It  is  thus 
she  has  to  take  up  her  cross,  not  the  less  hard  to  bear 
that  her  own  hands  have  so  far  fashioned  it. 

One  grave  criticism  on  the  death-scene  has  been 
made,  that  at  first  sight  seems  unanswerable.  It  is 
said  that  no  such  full,  swift  recognition  between  the 


Mill  on  the  Floss  25 

brother  and  sister,  in  those  last  moments  of  their 
long-severed  lives,  is  possible ;  because  there  is  no  true 
point  of  contact  through  which  such  recognition, 
on  the  brother's  part,  could  ensue.  We  think,  how- 
ever, there  is  something  revealed  to  us  in  the  brother 
which  brings  him  nearer  to  what  is  noblest  and  deep- 
est in  the  sister  than  at  first  appears.  He  also  has 
his  ideal  of  duty  and  right  :  it  may  not  be  a  very 
broad  or  high  one,  but  it  is  there  ;  it  is  something 
without  and  above  mere  self;  and  it  is  resolutely 
adhered  to  at  whatsoever  cost  of  personal  ease  or 
pleasure.  That  such  aim  cannot  be  so  followed  on 
without,  to  some  extent,  ennobling  the  whole  nature, 
is  shown  in  his  love  for  Lucy.  It  has  come  on  him, 
and  grown  up  with  him,  unconsciously,  when  there 
was  no  wrong  connected  with  it ;  but  with  her 
'engagement*  to  Stephen  all  this  is  changed.  Hard 
and  stern  as  he  is  to  others,  he  is  thenceforth  the 
harder  and  sterner  still  to  self.  There  is  no  palter- 
ing with  temptation,  such  as  brings  the  sister  so  near 
to  hopeless  fall.  Here  the  cold  harsh  brother  rises 
to  true  nobility,  and  shows  that  upon  him,  too,  life 
has  established  its  higher  claim  than  that  of  mere 
self-seeking  enjoyment.  There  is,  then,  this  point 
of  contact  between  these  two,  that  each  has  an  ideal 
of  duty  and  right,  and  to  it  each  is  content  to  sacrifice 
all  things  else.  Through  this,  in  that  death-look, 
they  recognize  each  other;  and  the  author's  motto 
in  its  full  significance  is  justified,  "  In  their  death 
they  were  not  divided." 


26  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

"Silas  Marner,"  though  carefully  finished,  is  of 
slighter  character  than  any  of  the  author's  later  works, 
and  does  not  require  lengthened  notice.  In  Godfrey 
Cass  we  have  again,  though  largely  modified,  the  type 
of  character  in  which  self  is  the  main  object  of  regard, 
and  in  which,  therefore,  with  much  that  is  likeable, 
and  even,  for  the  circumstances  in  which  it  has  grown 
up,  estimable,  there  is  little  depth,  truth,  or  stead- 
fastness. Repentance,  and,  so  far  as  it  is  possible, 
restoration  come  to  him  mainly  through  the  silent 
ministration  of  a  purer  and  better  nature  than  his 
own ;  but  the  self-pleasing  of  the  past  has  brought 
about  that  which  no  repentance  can  fully  reverse  or 
restore.  Even  on  the  surface  this  is  shown ;  for 
Eppie,  unknown  and  neglected,  can  never  become 
his  daughter.  But — far  beyond  and  beneath  this — 
we  have  here,  and  elsewhere  throughout  the  author's 
works,  indicated  to  us  one  of  the  most  solemn,  and, 
at  the  same  time,  most  certain  truths  of  our  existence : 
that  there  are  forms  of  accepted  and  fostered  evil  so 
vital  that  no  repentance  can  fully  blot  them  out  from 
the  present  or  the  future  of  life.  No  turning  away 
from  the  accursed  thing,  no  discipline,  no  futurity 
near  or  far,  can  ever  place  Arthur  Donnithorne  or 
Godfrey  Cass  alongside  Dinah  Morris  or  Adam  Bede. 
Their  irreversible  part  of  self-worship  precludes  them, 
by  the  very  laws  of  our  being,  from  the  highest  and 
broadest  achievement  of  life  and  destiny. 

Leaving  for  the  present  "  Romola,"  as  in  many 
respects  more    direct!}'  linking  itself  with    George 


Felix  Holt  2j 

Eliot's  great  poetic  effort,  "The  Spanish  Gypsy,"  we 
turn  for  a  little  to  "  Felix  Holt,"  the  next  of  her  English 
tales.  It  would  be  perhaps  natural  to  select,  from 
among  the  characters  here  presented  to  us,  in  illus- 
tration of  life  consciously  attuning  itself  to  the  highest 
aim  irrespective  of  any  end  save  that  aim  itself,  one 
or  other  of  the  two  in  whom  this  is  most  palpably 
presented  to  us — Felix  himself  or  Esther  Lyon. 
We  prefer,  however,  selecting "  Harold  Transome, 
certainly  one  of  the  most  difficult  and  one  of  the 
most  strikingly  wrought  out  conceptions,  not  only 
in  the  works  of  George  Eliot,  but  in  modern  fiction. 

Harold,  we  believe,  is  not  a  general  favorite  with 
the  modern  public,  any  more  than  he  was  with  his 
own  contemporaries.  He  has  none  of  those  lovable- 
nesses  which  make  Arthur  Donnithorne  so  attrac- 
tive ;  and  at  first  sight  nothing  of  that  uncompromis- 
ing sense  of  right  which  characterizes  Adam  Bede. 
He  comes  before  us  apparently  no  more  than  a  clear- 
headed, hard,  shrewd,  successful  man  of  the  world, 
greatly  alive  to  his  own  interests  and  importance, 
and  with  no  particular  principles  to  boast  of. 

How  does  it  come  that  this  man,  when  over  and 
over  again,  in  great  things  and  in  small,  two  paths  lie 
before  him  to  choose,  always  chooses  the  truer  and 
better  of  the  two  ?  When  Felix  attempts  to  interfere 
in  the  conduct  of  his  election,  even  while  resenting 
the  interference  as  impertinent,  he  sets  himself  hon- 
estly to  attempt  to  arrest  the  wrong.  He  buys  Chris- 
tian's secret;  but  it  is  to  reveal  it -to  her  whom  it 


28  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

enables,  if  so  she  shall  choose,  to  dislodge  himself 
from  the  position  which  has  been  the  great  object  of 
his  desires  and  efforts.  By  simply  allowing  the  trial 
and  sentence  of  Felix  to  take  their  course,  he  would, 
to  all  appearance,  strengthen  the  possibility  that  by 
marriage  to  Esther  his  position  shall  be  maintained, 
with  the  further  joy  of  having  that  "white  new- 
winged  dove  "  thenceforth  by  his  side.  He  comes 
forward  as  witness  on  behalf  of  Felix,  and  gives  his 
evidence  fairly,  truly,  and  in  such  guise  as  makes  it 
tell  most  favorably  for  the  accused,  and  at  the  same 
time  against  himself;  and,  last  and  most  touching  of 
all,  it  is  after  he  knows  the  full  depth  of  the  humili- 
ation in  which  his  mother's  sin  has  for  life  involved 
him,  that  his  first  exhibition  of  tenderness,  sympathy, 
and  confidence  towards  that  poor  stricken  heart  and 
blighted  life  comes  forth.  How  comes  it  that  this 
"  well-tanned  man  of  the  world"  thus  always  chooses 
the  higher  and  more  difficult  right ;  and  does  this 
in  no  excitement  or  enthusiasm,  but  coolly,  calculat- 
ingly, with  clear  forecasting  of  all  the  consequences, 
and  fairly  entitled  to  asssume  that  these  shall  be  to 
his  own  peril  or  detriment  ? 

We  cannot  assign  this  seeming  anomaly  to  that 
undefinable  something  called  the  instinct  of  the 
gentleman,*  so  specially  recognized  in  the  elder 
and  younger    Debarry,  as  a  reality  and  power  in 

*  Perhaps  no  finer  and  more  subtle  illustration  of  this  "  instinct  of  the 
gentleman  "  can  be  found  in  literature  than  when,  at  the  moment  of 
Harold  Transome's  deepest  humiliation,  where  Jermyn  claims  him 


Felix  Holt  29 

life.  To  say  nothing  of  the  fact  that  this  instinct 
deals  primarily  with  questions  of  feeling,  and  only 
indirectly  and  incidentally  with  questions  of  moral 
right,  Harold  Transome,  alike  congenitally  and  cir- 
cumstantially, could  scarcely  by  possibility  have  been 
animated  by  it  even  in  slight  degree,  nor  does  it 
ever  betray  its  presence  in  him  through  those  slight 
but  graceful  courtesies  of  life  which  are  pre-emi- 
nently the  sphere  of  its  manifestation.  Equally  un- 
tenable is  the  hypothesis  which  ascribes  these  mani- 
festations of  character  wholly  to  the  influence  of  a 
nature  higher  than  his  own  appealing  to  him — that 
of  Felix  Holt,  the  glorious  old  Dissenter,  or  Esther 
Lyon.  Such  appeals  can  have  any  avail  only  when 
in  the  nature  appealed  to  there  remains  the  capability 
to  recognize  that  right  is  greater  than  success  or  joy, 
and  the  moral  power  of  will  to  act  on  that  recogni- 
tion. In  the  fact  that  Harold's  nature  does  respond 
to  these  appeals  we  have  the  clue  to  the  apparent 
anomaly  his  character  presents.  We  see  that,  how- 
soever overlaid  by  temperament  and  restrained  by 
circumstance,  the  noblest  capability  in  man  still  sur- 
vives and  is  active  in  him.  He  can  choose  the  rierht 
which  imperils  his  own  interests,  because  it  is  the 
right ;  he  can  set  his  back  on  the  wrong  which  would 
advantage  himself,  because  it  is  the  wrong.  That  he 
does  this  coolly,  temperately,  without  enthusiasm, 

as  his  son,  good  old  Sir  Marmaduke,  not  only  his  political  opponent 
but  personally  disliking  him,  for  the  first  and  only  time  in  all  their 
intercourse,  addresses  him  by  his  Christian  name,  "Come,  Harold." 


30  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

with  full,  clear  forecasting  of  all  the  consequences,  is 
only  saying  that  he  is  Harold  Transome  still.  That 
he  does  so  choose  when  the  forecast  probabilities  are 
all  against  those  objects  which  the  mere  man  of  the 
world  most  desires,  proves  that  under  that  hard 
external  crust  dwells  as  essential  a  nobleness  as  any 
we  recognize  in  Felix  Holt.  There  is  an  inherent 
strength  and  manliness  in  Harold  Transome  to  which 
Arthur  Donnithorne  or  Godfrey  Cass  can  never  attain. 

Few  things  in  the  literary  history  of  the  age  are 
more  puzzling  than  the  reception  given  to  "  Romola  " 
by  a  novel-devouring  public.  That  the  lovers  of 
mere  sensationalism  should  not  have  appreciated  it, 
was  to  be  fully  expected.  But  to  probably  the  ma- 
jority of  readers,  even  of  average  intelligence  and 
capability,  it  was,  and  still  is,  nothing  but  a  weariness. 
With  the  more  thoughtful,  on  the  other  hand,  it  took 
at  once  its  rightful  place,  not  merely  as  by  far  the 
finest  and  highest  of  all  the  author's  works,  but  as 
perhaps  the  greatest  and  most  perfect  work  of  fiction 
of  its  class  ever  till  then  produced. 

Of  its  artistic  merits  we  do  not  propose  to  speak- 
in  detail.  But  as  a  historical  reproduction  of  an 
epoch  and  a  life  peculiarly  difficult  of  reproduction, 
we  do  not  for  a  moment  .hesitate  to  say  that  it  has 
no  rival,  except,  perhaps, — and  even  that  at  a  dis- 
tance,— Victor  Hugo's  incomparably  greatest  work, 
"  Notre  Dame  de  Paris."  It  is  not  that  we  see  as  in  a 
panorama  the  Florence  of  the  Medicis  and  Savon- 
arola,— we  live,  we  move,  we  feel  as  if  actors  in  it. 


Romola  3 1 

Its  turbulence,  its  struggles  for  freedom  and  indepen- 
dence, its  factions  with  their  complicated  transitions 
and  changes,  its  conspiracies  and  treasons,  its  classical 
jealousies  and  triumphs, — we  feel  ourselves  mixed 
up  with  them  all.  Names  historically  immortal  are 
made  to  us  familiar  presences  and  voices.  Its  nobles 
and  its  craftsmen  alike  become  to  us  as  friends  or  foes. 
Its  very  buildings — the  Duomo  and  the  Campanile, 
and  many  another — rise  in  their  stateliness  and  their 
grace  before  those  who  have  never  been  privileged 
to  see  them,  clear  and  vivid  as  the  rude  northern 
houses  that  daily  obtrude  on  our  gaze. 

So  distinct  and  all-pervading,  in  this  great  work, 
is  what  we  are  maintaining  to  be  the  central  moral 
purpose  of  all  the  author's  works,  that  it  can  scarcely 
escape  the  notice  of  the  most  superficial  reader. 
Affirmatively  and  negatively,  in  Romola  and  Tito — 
the  two  forms  of  illustration  to  some  extent  combined 
in  Savonarola — the  constant,  persistent,  unfaltering 
utterance  of  the  book  is,  that  the  only  true  worth  and 
Teatness  of  humanity  lies  in  its  pursuit  of  the  highest 
|truth,  purity,  and  right,  irrespective  of  every  issue, 
and  in  exclusion  of  every  meaner  aim ;  and  that  the 
true  debasement  and  hopeless  loss  of  humanity  lies 
in  the  path  of  self-pleasing.  The  form  of  this  work, 
the  time  and  country  in  which  the  scene  is  laid,  and  the 
selection  of  one  of  the  three  great  actors  in  it,  leads 
the  author  more  definitely  than  in  almost  any  of  those 
which  preceded  it  to  connect  her  moral  lesson,  not 
merely  with  Christianity  as  a  religious  faith,  but  with 


$2  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

that  Church  which,  as  called  by  the  name  of  Christ, 
howsoever  fallen  away  from  its  "  first  love,"  is  still, 
in  the  very  fact  of  its  existence,  a  witness  for  Him. 
While,  on  the  other  hand,  through  many  of  its  sub- 
ordinate characters,  we  have  the  broad  catholic  truth 
kept  ever  before  us,  that,  irrespective  of  all  formal  pro- 
fession or  creed,  voluntary  acceptance  of  a  higher  life- 
law  than  the  seeking  our  own  interests,  pleasure,  or 
will,  is,  according  to  its  degree,  life's  best  and  highest 
fulfilment;  and  thus  we  trace  Him  who  "  pleased  not 
Himself"  as  the  life  and  the  light  of  the  world,  even 
when  that  world  may  be  least  formally  acknowledg- 
ing Him. 

The  three  in  whom  this  great  lesson  is  most  prom- 
inently illustrated  in  the  work  before  us  are,  of  course, 
Romola  herself,  Tito  Melema,and  Savonarola.  And 
in  each  the  illustration  is  so  modified,  and,  through 
the  three  together,  so  almost  exhaustively  accom- 
plished, that  some  examination  of  each  seems  neces- 
sary to  our  main  object  in  this  survey  of  George 
Eliot's  works. 

Few,  we  think,  can  study  the  delineation  of 
Romola  without  feeling  that  imagination  has  seldom 
placed  before  us  a  fairer,  nobler,  and  completer  female 
presence.  Perfectly  human  and  natural ;  unexagger- 
ated,  we  might  almost  say  unidealized,  alike  in  her 
weaknesses  and  her  nobleness;  combining  such  deep 
womanly  tenderness  with  such  spotless  purity;  so 
transparent  in  her  truthfulness ;  so  clear  in  her  per- 
ceptions of  the  true  and  good,  so  firm  in  her  aspira- 


Rom  ola  33 

tions  after  these  ;  so  broad,  gentle,  and  forbearing  in 
her  charity,  yet  so  resolute  against  all  that  is  mean 
and  base ; — everything  fair,  bright,  and  high  in 
womanhood  seems  to  combine  in  Romola.  So  true, 
also,  is  the  process  of  her  development  to  what  is 
called  nature — to  the  laws  and  principles  that  reg- 
ulate human  action  and  life — that,  as  it  proceeds 
before  us,  we  almost  lose  note  that  there  is  develop- 
ment. The  fair  young  heathen  first  presented  to  us, 
linked  on  to  classic  times  and  moralities  through  all 
the  surroundings  of  her  life,  passes  on  so  impercep- 
tibly into  the  "visible  Madonna"  of  the  after-time, 
that  we  scarcely  observe  the  change  till  it  is  accom- 
plished. From  the  first,  we  know  that  the  mature  is 
involved  in  the  young  Romola.  The  reason  of  this 
is,  that  from  first  to  last  the  essential  principle  of  life 
is  in  her  the  same.  Equally,  when  she  first  comes 
before  us,  and  in  all  the  after-glory  of  her  serene 
unconscious  self  devotedness,  she  is  living  to  others, 
not  to  herself. 

Her  first  devotion  is  to  her  father.  Her  one  passion 
of  life  is  to  compensate  to  him  all  he  has  lost :  the 
eyes,  once  so  full  of  fire,  now  sightless  ;  the  son  and 
brother,  who,  at  the  call  of  an  enthusiasm  with  which 
their  nobler  natures  refuse  to  sympathize — for  it  was, 
in  the  first  instance,  but  the  supposed  need  to  save  his 
own  soul — has  fled  from  his  nearest  duty  of  life.  To 
this  devotion  she  consecrates  her  fair  young  existence. 
For  this  she  dismisses  from  it  all  thought  of  ease  or 
pleasure,  and  chooses  retirement  and  isolation ;  gives 


34  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

herself  to  uncongenial  studies  and  endless  labors, 
and  accepts,  in  uncomplaining  sadness,  that  which 
to  such  a  nature  is  hardest  of  all  to  bear — her  father's 
non-appreciation  of  all  she  would  be  and  is  to  him. 
From  the  first,  her  life  is  one  of  entire  self-consecra- 
tion. The  sphere  of  its  activities  expands  as  years 
flow  on,  but  the  principle  is  throughout  the  same. 

In  the  exquisite  simplicity,  purity,  and  tenderness 
of  her  young  love,  she  is  Romoia  still.  There  is  no 
self-isolation  included  in  it.  Side  by  side  with  satis- 
fying her  own  yearning  heart,  lies  the  thought  that  she 
is  thus  giving  to  her  father  a  son  to  replace  him  who 
has  forsaken  him.  Her  first  perception  of  the  want  of 
perfect  oneness  between  Tito  and  herself  dawns  upon 
her  through  no  change  in  him  towards  herself,  but 
through  his  less  sedulous  attendance  on  her  father. 
And  when  at  last  the  conviction  is  borne  in  upon  her 
that  between  him  and  her,  seemingly  so  closely  united, 
there  lies  the  gulf  that  parts  truth  and  falsehood, 
heaven  and  hell,  it  is  no  perceptible  withdrawal  of 
his  love  from  her  that  forces  on  her  this  conviction. 
It  is  his  falseness  and  treason  to  the  dead. 

Then  comes  the  crisis  of  her  career;  her  flight  from 
the  unendurable  burden  of  that  divided  life  ;  her 
meeting  with  Savonarola;  and  her  being  through 
him  brought  face  to  face  with  the  Christian  aspect  of 
that  deepest  of  all  moral  truths, — the  precedence  of 
duty  above  all  else.  Savonarola's  demand  might  well 
seem  to  one  such  as  Romoia  laying  on  her  a  burden 
too  heavy  to  be  borne.    It  was  not  that  it  called  her 


Romola  3  5 

to  return  to  hardness  and  pain;  she  was  going  forth 
unshrinking  into  the  unknown  with  no  certainty  but 
that  these  would  find  her  there  ;  it  called  her  to 
return  to  what,  with  her  high  ideal  of  love  and  life, 
could  not  but  seem  degradation  and  sin, — according 
in  the  living  daily  lie  that  they  two,  so  hopelessly 
parted,  were  one.  To  any  lower  nature  the  appeal 
would  have  been  addressed  in  vain.  It  prevails  with 
her  because  it  sets  before  her  but  the  extension  and 
more  perfect  fulfilment  of  the  life-law  toward  which 
she  has  been  always  aiming,  even  through  the  dim 
light  of  her  all  but  heathen  nurture. 

She  goes  back  to  reassume  her  cross:  sadly, wea- 
riedly  forecasting,  as  only  such  a  nature  can  do,  all  its 
shame  and  pain  ;  and  even  still  only  dimly  assured 
that  her  true  path  lies  here.  The  very  nobleness 
which  constrains  her  return  makes  that  return  the 
harder.  The  unknown  into  which  she  had  thought 
to  flee  had  no  possibility  of  pain  or  fear  for  her,  com- 
pared to  the  certain  pain  and  difficulty  of  that  life 
from  which  all  reality  of  love  is  gone  :  where  her 
earnest,  truthful  spirit  must  live  in  daily  contact 
with  baseness, — may  even  have,  through  virtue  of 
her  relation  to  Tito,  tacitly  to  concur  in  treason.  She 
goes  back  to  what,  constituted  as  she  is,  can  be  only 
a  daily,  life-long  crucifying,  and  she  goes  back  to  it 
knowing  that  such  it  must  be. 

Thenceforth  goes  on  in  her  that  process  which, 
far  beyond  all  reasonings,  makes  the  mystery  of  sor- 
row intelligible  to  us, — the  "  making  perfect  through 


36  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

suffering."  It  is  not  necessary  we  should  trace  the 
process  step  by  step.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  do  so, 
for  its  stages  are  too  subtle  to  be  so  traced.  We  see 
rather  by  result  than  in  operation  how  her  path  of 
voluntary  self-consecration — of  care  and  thought  for 
all  save  self — of  patient,  silent,  solitary  endurance 
of  her  crown  of  thorns,  is  brightening  more  and  more 
toward  the  perfect  day.  In  the  streets  of  the  faction- 
torn,  plague-stricken,  famine-wasted  city;  by  the  side 
of  the  outraged  Baldassarre  ;  in  the  room  of  the  child- 
mistress  Tessa;  most  of  all  in  that  home  whence  all 
otherbrightnesshas  departed, — she  moves  and  stands 
more  and  more  before  us  the  "  visible  Madonna." 

How  sharply  the  sword  has  pierced  her  heart, 
how  sorely  the  crown  of  thorns  is  pressing  her  fair 
young  brow,  we  learn  in  part  from  her  decisive 
interview  with  Tessa.  She,  the  high-born  lady,  spot- 
less in  purity,  shrinking  back  from  the  very  shadow 
of  degradation,  questions  the  unconscious  instrument 
of  one  of  her  many  wrongs  with  the  one  anxiety  and 
hope  that  she  may  prove  to  be  no  true  wife  after  all ; 
that  the  bond  which  binds  her  to  living  falsehood 
and  baseness  may  be  broken,  though  its  breaking 
stamp  her  with  outward  dishonor  and  blot.  Other- 
wise there  is  no  obtrusion  of  her  burning  pain  ;  no 
revolt  of  faith  and  trust,  impeaching  God  of  hardness 
and  wrong  toward  her;  no  murmur  in  His  ear,  any 
more  than  in  the  ear  of  man.  Meek,  patient, 
steadfast,  she  devotes  herself  to  every  duty  and  right 
that  life  has  left  to  her ;    and  the  dark-garmented 


Romola  37 

Piagnone  moves  about  the  busy  scene  a  white-robed 
ministrant  of  mercy  and  love.  Ever  and  anon,  indeed, 
the  lonely  anguish  of  her  heart  breaks  forth,  but  in 
the  form  of  expression  it  assumes  she  is  emphatically 
herself.  In  those  frequent  touching  appeals  to  Tito, 
deepening  in  their  sweet  earnestness  with  every 
failure,  we  may  read  the  intensity  of  her  ever-present 
inward  pain.  In  them  all  the  self-seeking  of  love 
has  no  place.  The  effort  is  always  primarily  directed, 
not  toward  winning  back  his  love  and  confidence  for 
herself,  but  toward  winning  him  back  to  truth  and 
right  and  loyalty  of  soul.  Her  pure,  high  instinct 
knows  that  only  so  can  love  return  between  them — 
can  the  shattered  bond  be  again  taken  up.  She 
seeks  to  save  him. — him  who  will  not  be  saved,  who 
has  already  vitally  placed  himself  out  of  the  pale 
of  possible  salvation. 

One  of  the  most  touching  manifestations  in  this 
most  touching  of  all  records  of  feminine  nobleness 
and  suffering,  is  the  story  of  her  relations  to  Tessa. 
It  would  seem  as  if  in  that  large  heart  jealousy,  the 
reaching  self-love  of  love,  could  find  no  place.  Her 
discovery  of  the  relation  in  which  Tessa  stands  to 
Tito  awakens  first  that  saddest  of  all  sad  hopes  in  one 
like  Romola,  that  through  the  contadina  she  may  be 
released  from  the  marriage-bond  that  so  galls  and 
darkens  her  life.  When  that  hope  is  gone,  no  thought 
of  Tessa  as  a  successful  rival  presents  itself.  She 
thinks  of  her  only  as  another  victim  of  Tito's  wrong- 
doing— as  a  weak,  simple,  helpless  child,  innocent  of 


38  The  Ethics  of  Geoj'ge  Eliot's  Works 

all  conscious  fault,  to  be  shielded  and  cared  for  in  the 
hour  of  need. 

At  last,  after  the  foulest  of  Tito's  treasons,  which 
purchases  safety  and  advancement  for  himself  by  the 
betrayal  and  death  of  her  noble  old  godfather,  her 
last  living  link  to  the  past,  the  burden  of  her  life 
becomes  beyond  her  bearing,  and  again  she  attempts 
to  lay  it  down  by  fleeing.  There  is  no  Savonarola 
now  to  meet  and  turn  her  back.  Savonarola  has  lost 
the  power,  has  forfeited  the  right,  to  do  so.  The 
pupil  has  outgrown  the  teacher;  her  self-renunciation 
has  become  simpler,  purer,  deeper,  more  entire  than 
his.  The  last  words  exchanged  between  these  two 
bring  before  us  the  change  that  has  come  over  the 
spiritual  relations  between  them.  "The  cause  of  my 
party,"  says  Savonarola,  "is  the  cause  of  God's  king- 
dom." "  I  do  not  believe  it,"  is  the  reply  of  Romola's 
<l  passionate  repugnance."  "  God's  kingdom  is  some- 
thing wider,  else  let  me  stand  without  it  with  the 
beings  that  I  love."  These  words  tell  us  the  secret 
of  Savonarola's  gathering  weakness  and  of  Romola's 
strength.  Self,  under  the  subtle  form  of  identifying 
truth  and  right  with  his  own  party — with  his  own 
personal  judgment  of  the  cause  and  the  course  of 
right — has  so  far  led  him  astray  from  the  straight 
onward  path.  Right,  in  its  clear,  calm,  direct  sim- 
plicity, has  become  to  her  supreme  above  what  is 
commonly  called  salvation  itself. 

It  is  another  agency  than  Savonarola's  now  that 
brings  her  back  once  more  to  take  up  the  full  burden 


Romola  39 

of  her  cross.  She  goes  forth  not  knowing  or  heeding 
whither  she  goes,  "  drifting  away  "  unconscious  before 
wind  and  wave.  These  bear  her  into  the  midst 
of  terror,  suffering,  and  death  ;  and  there,  in  self- 
devotedness  toothers,  in  patient  ministrations  of  love 
amid  poverty,  ignorance  and  superstition,  the  noble 
spirit  rights  itself  once  more,  the  weary  fainting  heart 
regains  its  quiet  steadfastness.  She  knows  once  more 
that  no  amount  of  wrong-doing  can  dissolve  the  bond 
uniting  her  to  Tito  ;  that  no  degree  of  pain  may  law- 
fully drive  her  forth  from  that  sphere  of  doing  and 
suffering  which  is  hers.  She  returns,  not  in  joy  or 
hope,  but  in  that  which  is  deeper  than  all  joy  and 
hope — in  love  ;  the  one  thought  revealed  to  us  being 
that  it  may  be  her  blessedness  to  stand  by  him  whose 
baseness  drove  her  away  when  suffering  and  loss  have 
come  upon  him.  But  Death — the  mystery  to  which 
we  look  as  the  solver  of  all  earthly  mysteries — has 
resolved  for  her  this  darkest  and  saddest  perplexity  of 
her  life.  Tito  is  gone  to  his  place  :  and  his  baseness 
shall  vex  her  no  more  with  antagonistic  duties  and 
a  divided  life.  There  is  no  joy,  no  expressed  sense 
of  relief  and  release  ;  no  reproach  of  him  other  than 
that  implied  one  which  springs  out  of  the  necessities 
of  her  being,  the  putting  away  from  her,  quietly  and 
unobtrusively,  the  material  gains  of  his  treasons. 
The  poor  innocent  wrong-doer,  Tessa,  is  sought 
for,  rescued,  and  cared  for ;  and  is  never  allowed 
to  know  the  foul  wrong  to  her  rescuer  of  which 
she   has   been    made    the    unconscious   instrument. 


40  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

Even  to  her  the  language  is  that  "  Naldo  will  return 
no  more,  not  because  he  is  cruel,  but  because  he 
is  dead." 

One  direct  trial  of  her  faith  and  patience  remains, 
through  the  weakness  and  apparent  apostasy  of  Savo- 
narola. Has  he,  through  whom  first  came  to  her 
definite  guidance  amid  the  dark  perplexities  of  her 
life,  been  always  untrue?  has  the  light  that  seemed 
through  him  to  dawn  on  her  been  therefore  mislead- 
ing and  perverting?  In  almost  agonized  intentness 
she  listens  for  some  word,  watches  for  some  sign, 
which  shall  tell  her  it  has  not  been  so.  She  outrages 
all  her  womanly  sensibilities  by  being  present  at  the 
death-scene,  in  hope  that  something  there,  were  it  but 
the  uplifting  of  the  drooping  head  to  the  clear  true 
light  of  heaven,  shall  reassure  her  that  the  prophet 
was  a  true  prophet,  and  his  voice  to  her  the  voice  of 
God.  But  she  watches  in  vain.  Without  word  or 
sign  that  even  her  quick  sure  instinct  can  interpret, 
Savonarola  passes  into  "the  eternal  silence."  What 
measure  of  overshadowing  darkness  and  sorrow  then 
again  fell  over  her  life  we  are  not  told  :  we  only  know 
how  that  life  passed  from  under  this  cloud  also  into 
purer  and  serener  light.  This  perplexity  also  solves 
itself  for  her  in  the  path  of  unquestioning  acceptance 
of  duty,  human  service,  and  human  love  ;  and  as  she 
treads  this  path,  the  mists  clear  away  from  around 
Savonarola  too,  and  she  sees  him  again  at  last  as  he 
really  was,  in  the  essential  truthfulness,  nobleness, 
and  self-devotedness  of  his  life. 


Romola  41 

Of  the  after-life  little  is  told  us,  but  little  needed 
to  be  told.  We  have  followed  Romola  thus  far  with 
dulled  intelligence  of  mind  and  soul  if  we  cannot 
picture  it  clearly  and  certainly  for  ourselves.  Love 
that  never  falters,  patience  that  never  questions, 
meekness  that  never  fails,  truth  clear  and  still  as  the 
light  of  heaven,  devotedness  that  knows  no  thought 
of  self,  a  life  flowing  calmly  on  through  whatever  of 
sorrow  and  disappointment  may  remain  toward  the 
perfect  purity  and  blessedness  of  heaven.  Few,  we 
think,  can  carefully  study  the  character  and  devel- 
opment of  Romola  del  Bardo  and  refuse  to  endorse 
the  verdict  that  Imagination  has  given  us  no  figure 
more  rounded  and  complete  in  every  grace  and  glory 
of  feminine  loveliness. 

The  sensational  fiction  of  the  day  has  labored  hard 
in  the  production  of  great  criminals  ;  but  it  has  pro- 
duced no  human  being  so  vitally  debased,  no  nature 
so  utterly  loathsome,  no  soul  so  hopelessly  lost,  as 
the  handsome,  smiling,  accomplished,  popular,  vice- 
less  Greek,  Tito  Melema.  Yet  is  he  the  very  reverse 
of  what  is  called  a  monster  of  iniquity.  That  which 
gives  its  deep  and  awful  power  to  the  picture 
is  its  simple,  unstrained  unvarnished  truthfulness. 
He  knows  little  of  himself  who  does  not  recognize 
as  existent  within  himself,  and  as  always  battling 
for  supremacy  there,  that  principle  of  evil  which, 
accepted  by  Tito  as  his  life-law,  and  therefore 
consummating  itself  in  him,  "bringeth  forth  death;" 
death  the   most  utter  and,  so  far  as   it  is  possible 


42  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

to  see,  the  most  hopeless  that  can  engulf  the 
human  soul. 

The  conception  of  Tito  as  one  great  central  figure 
in  a  work  of  art  would  scarcely,  we  think,  have  occur- 
red to  any  one  whose  moral  aim  was  other  than  that 
which  it  is  the  endeavor  of  these  remarks  to  trace  out 
in  George  Eliot's  works.  The  working  out  of  that 
conception,  as  it  is  here  worked  out,  would,  we  be- 
lieve, have  been  impossible  to  any  one  who  had  less 
strongly  realized  wherein  all  the  true  nobleness  and 
all  the  true  debasement  of  humanity  lie. 

Outwardly,  on  his  first  appearance,  there  is  not 
merely  nothing  repellent  about  Tito  ;  in  person  and 
manner,  in  genial  kindly  temper,  in  those  very  forms 
of  intelligence  and  accomplishment  that  specially  suit 
the  city  and  the  time,  there  is  superficially  everything 
to  conciliate  and  attract.  It  is  almost  impossible  to 
define  the  subtle  threads  of  indication  through  which, 
from  the  first,  we  are  forced  to  distrust  him.  Super- 
ficially, it  might  seem  at  this  time  as  if  with  Tito  the 
probabilities  were  equal  as  regards  good  and  evil ; 
and  that  with  Romola's  love  thrown  into  the  scale, 
their  preponderance  on  the  side  of  good  were  all  but 
irresistible.  Yet  from  the  first  we  feel  that  it  is  other- 
wise— that  this  light,  genial,  ease-loving  nature  has 
already,  by  its  innate  habitude  of  self-pleasing,  fore- 
ordained itself  to  sink  down  into  ever  deeper  and 
more  utter  debasement.  With  the  "  slight,  almost 
imperceptible  start,"  at  the  accidental  words  which 
connect  the  value  of  his  jewels  with  "a  man's  ran- 


Romola  43 

som,"  we  feel  that  some  baseness  is  already  within 
himself  contemplated.  With  the  transference  of  their 
price  to  the  goldsmith's  hands,  we  know  that  the 
baseness-  is  in  his  heart  resolved  on.  When  the 
message  through  the  monk  tells  him  that  the  ransom 
may  still  be  available,  we  never  doubt  what  the 
decision  will  be.  Present  ease  and  enjoyment,  the 
maintaining  and  improving  the  position  he  has  won 
— in  short,  the  "something  that  is  due  to  himself," 
rather  than  a  distant,  dangerous,  possibly  fruitless 
duty,  howsoever  clear. 

The  one  purer  feeling  in  that  corrupt  heart — his 
love  for  Romola — is  almost  from  the  first  tainted  by 
the  same  selfishness.  From  the  first  he  recognizes 
that  his  relation  to  her  will  give  him  a  certain  position 
in  the  city;  and  he  feels  that  with  his  ready  tact  and 
Greek  suppleness  this  is  all  that  is  needed  to  secure 
his  further  advancement.  The  vital  antagonism 
between  his  nature  and  hers  bars  the  possibility  of 
his  foreseeing  how  her  truthfulness,  nobleness  and 
purity  shall  become  the  thorn  in  his  ease-loving  life. 

In  his  earlier  relations  with  Tessa,  there  is  nothing 
more  than  seeking  a  present  and  passing  amuse- 
ment, and  the  desire  to  sun  himself  in  her  childish 
admiration  and  delight.  He  is  as  far  as  possible  from 
the  intentional  seducer  and  betrayer.  But  his  acci- 
dental encounters  with  her,  cause  him  perplexity  and 
annoyance ;  and  at  last  it  seems  to  him  safer  for  his 
own  position,  especially  in  regard  to  Romola,  that 
she  should  be  secretly  housed  as  she  is,  and  taught 


44  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

to  regard  herself  as  his  wife.  Soon  there  comes  to 
be  more  of  ease  for  him  with  the  bond-submissive 
child-mistress  than  in  the  presence  of  the  high- 
souled,  pure-hearted  wife. 

In  the  first  and  decisive  encounter  with  Baldassare, 
the  words  of  repudiation  which  seal  the  whole  after- 
character  of  his  life,  apparently  escape  from  him 
unconsciously  and  by  surprise.  But  it  is  the  traitor- 
heart  that  speaks  them.  They  could  never  even  by 
surprise  have  escaped  the  lips,  had  not  the  baseness 
of  their  denial  and  desertion  been  already  in  the 
heart  consummated. 

We  need  not  follow  him  through  all  his  subsequent 
and  deepening  treasons.  They  all,  without  excep- 
tion, want  every  element  that  might  make  even 
treason  impressive.  They  want  even  such  factitious 
elevation  as  their  being  prompted  by  hatred  or 
revenge  might  lend  ;  even  such  broader  interest  as 
their  being  done  in  the  interest  of  a  party,  or  for 
some  wide  end,  could  confer.  They  have  no  fuller 
or  deeper  import  than  the  present  ease,  present  safety, 
present  or  future  advantage,  of  that  object  which  fills 
up  his  universe, — Self.  He  would  rather  not  have 
betrayed  the  trust  reposed  in  him  by  Romola's  father, 
if  the  end  he  thereby  proposed  to  himself  could  have 
been  attained  otherwise  than  through  such  betrayal. 
His  plot  with  Dolfo  Spini  for  placing  the  great  Monk- 
prophet  in  the  hands  of  his  enemies,  has  no  darker 
motive  than  the  getting  out  of  the  way  an  indirect 
obstacle  to  his  own  advancement,  and  a  man  whose 


Rom  o  la  45 

labors  tend  to  make  life  harder  and  more  serious  for 
all  who  come  under  his  influence.  Bernardo  del  Nero, 
with  his  stainless  honor,  has  from  the  first  taken  up 
an  attitude  of  tacit  revulsion  toward  him ;  but  there 
is  no  revenge  prompting  the  part  he  plays  towards  the 
noble,  true-hearted  old  man.  He  would  rather  that 
he  and  his  fellow-victims  were  saved,  if  his  own  safety 
and  ultimate  gain  could  be  secured  otherwise  than 
through  their  betrayal  and  death.  There  is  no  hard- 
ness or  cruelty  in  him,  save  when  its  transient  displays 
toward  Romola  are  necessary  for  furthering  some 
present  end:  he  never  indulges  in  the  luxury  of 
unnecessary  and  unprofitable  sins.  The  sharp,  stead- 
fast, unwavering  consistency  of  Tito  is  even  more 
marked  than  that  of  Romola,  for  twice  Romola  falters, 
and  turns  to  flee.  The  supple,  flexible  Greek  follows 
out  the  law  he  has  laid  down  as  the  law  of  his  life, — 
worships  the  god  he  has  set  up  as  the  god  of  his  wor- 
ship with  an  inexorable  constancy  that  never  for  one 
chance  moment  falters.  That  god  is  self;  that  law  is, 
in  one  word,  self-pleasing.  Long  before  the  end  comes, 
we  feel  that  Tito  Melema  is  a  lost  soul  ;  that  for  him 
and  in  him  there  is  no  place  for  repentance;  that  to 
him  we  may  without  any  uncharity  apply  the  most 
fearful  words  human  language  has  ever  embodied ; 
he  has  sinned  the  "sin  which  cannot  be  forgiven, 
neither  in  this  world,  neither  in  the  world  to  come." 
"Justice,"  says  the  author,  as  the  dead  Tito  is 
borne  past  still  locked  in  the  death-clutch  of  the 
human  avenger — "justice    is  like    the   kingdom  of 


46  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

God  :  it  is  not  without  us  as  a  fact ;  it  is  within  us  as  a 
great  yearning."  In  these  solemn,  truthful  words 
we  have  suggested  to  us  how  feebly  mere  physical 
death  can  shadow  forth  that  spiritual  corruption,  that 
''second  death,"  which  we  have  seen  hour  by  hour 
consummating  in  him  who  has  lived  for  self  alone. 

Few  of  the  great  figures  which  stand  up  amid  the 
dimness  of  medieval  history  are  more  perplexing  to 
historian  and  biographer  than  Savonarola.  On  a  first 
glance  we  seem  shut  up  to  one  or  other  of  two  alter- 
natives— regarding  him  as  an  apostle  and  martyr,  or 
as  a  charlatan.  And  even  more  careful  examination 
leaves  in  his  character  and  life  anomalies  so  extraor- 
dinary, contradictions  so  inextricable,  that  most  his- 
torians have  fallen  back  on  the  hypothesis  of  partial 
insanity — the  insanity  born  of  an  honest  and  upright 
but  extravagant  fanaticism — as  the  only  one  adequate 
to  explain  the  mystery.  Whether  George  Eliot  has 
in  this  work  produced  a  more  satisfactory  solution, 
we  do  not  attempt  formally  to  determine.  We  are 
sure,  however,  that  every  thoughtful  reader  will  recog- 
nize that  the  solution  she  offers  is  the  one  in  strict 
and  deep  consistency  with  all  the  laws  of  human 
action,  and  all  the  tendencies  of  human  imperfection  ; 
and  that  the  Savonarola  she  places  before  us  is  a 
being  we  can  understand  by  sympathy — sympathy 
at  once  with  the  greatness  of  his  aims,  and  still  more 
fully  with  the  weaknesses  that  led  him  astray. 

The  picture  is  a  very  impressive  one,  alike  in  its 
grandeur  and  in  its  sadness,  speaking  its  true,  deep, 


Romola .  47 

universal  lesson  home  to  us  and  to  our  life;  alike 
when  it  shows  us  the  strength  and  nobleness  of  life 
attuning  itself  to  the  highest  good,  and  battling  on 
toward  the  highest  right ;  and  when  it  shows  us  how 
self,  under  a  form  which  does  not  seem  self,  may 
steal  in  to  sap  its  strength  and  to  abase  its  noble- 
ness. 

The  great  Monk-prophet  comes  upon  the  scene  a 
new  "voice  crying  in  the  wilderness  "  of  selfishness 
and  wrong  around  him — an  impassioned  witness  that 
"  there  is  a  God  that  judgeth  in  the  earth,"  protest- 
ing by  speech  and  by  life  against  the  self-seeking  and 
self-pleasing  he  sees  on  every  side.  To  the  putting 
down  of  this,  to  the  living  his  own  life,  to  the  rousing 
all  men  to  live  theirs,  not  to  pleasure,  but  to  God; 
merging  all  private  interests  in  the  public  good,  and 
that  the  best  good  ;  looking  each  one  not  to  his  own 
pleasures,  ambition,  or  ease,  but  to  that  which  shall 
best  advance  a  reign  of  truth,  justice,  and  love  on 
earth, — to  this  end  he  has  consecrated  himself  and 
all  his  powers.  The  path  thus  chosen  is  for  himself 
a  hard  one ;  circumstanced  as  our  humanity  is,  it 
never  has  been  otherwise — never  shall  be  so  while 
these  heavens  and  this  earth  remain.  Mere  personal 
self-denials,  mere  turning  away  from  the  outward 
pomps  and  vanities  of  the  world,  lie  very  lightly  on 
a  nature  like  Savonarola's,  and  such  things  scarcely 
enter  into  the  pain  and  hardness  of  his  chosen  lot. 
It  is  the  opposition, — active  in  the  intrigues  and 
machinations  of  enemies  both  in  church  and  state — 


48  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

passive  in  the  dull,  cold  hearts  that  respond  so  feebly 
and  fitfully  to  his  appeals  ;  it  is  the  constant  wearing 
bitterness  of  hope  deferred,  the  frequent  still  sterner 
bitterness  of  direct  disappointment, — it  is  things  like 
these  that  make  his  cross  so  heavy  to  bear.  But  they 
cannot  turn  him  aside  from  his  course — cannot  win 
him  to  lower  his  aim  to  something  short  of  the  highest 
good  conceivable  by  him.  We  may  smile  now  in 
our  days  of  so-called  enlightenment  at  some  of  the 
measures  he  directs  in  pursuance  of  his  great  aim. 
His  "  Pyramid  of  Vanities  "  may  be  to  our  self- 
satisfied  complacency  itself  a  vanity.  To  him  it 
represents  a  stern  reality  of  reformation  in  character 
and  life  ;  and  to  the  Florentine  of  his  age  it  symbol- 
izes one  form  of  vain  self-pleasing  offered  up  in 
solemn,  willing  sacrifice  to  God. 

One  trial  of  his  faith  and  steadfastness,  long  ex- 
pected, comes  on  him  at  last.  The  recognized  head 
of  that  great  organization  of  which  he  is  a  vowed 
and  consecrated  member  declares  against  him,  and 
the  papal  sentence  of  excommunication  goes  forth. 
We,  looking  as  we  deem  on  the  papacy  trembling  to  its 
fall,  can  very  imperfectly  enter  into  the  awful  gravity 
of  this  struggle.  To  us,  the  prohibition  of  an 
Alexander  Borgia  may  seem  of  small  account,  and  his 
anathema  of  small  weight  in  the  councils  of  the 
universe.  But  it  was  otherwise  with  Savonarola :  the 
Monk-apostle,  trained  and  vowed  to  unqualified  obe- 
dience, has  thus  forced  on  him  the  most  difficult 
problem  of  his  time.     This  to  him  more  than  earthly 


Romola  49 

authority,  the  visible  embodiment  of  the  Divine  on 
earth,  the  direct  and  only  representative  of  the  one 
authority  of  God  in  Christ,  has  declared,  his  course  to 
be  a  course  of  error  and  sin.  Shall  he  accept  or  reject 
the  decision  ?  To  reject,  is  to  break  w^ith  the  sup- 
posed tradition  of  fourteen  centuries,  and  with  all  his 
own  past  training,  predilection,  and  habks  of  thought ; 
it  is  to  nullify  his  own  voluntary  act  orthe  past,  ac- 
cepting implicit  obedience,  and  to  go  forth  on  a  path 
which  has  thenceforth  no  outward  guidance,  light  or 
stay.  To  accept,  is  to  break  with  all  his  own  truest 
and  deepest  past,  to  abandon  all  that  Tor  him  gives 
truth  and  reality  to  life,  and  to  retire  to  his  cell,  and 
limit  his  attention  thenceforth — if  he  can — to  making 
the  "salvation"  of  his  own  soul  securg.  We  may 
safely  esteem  that  this  is  the  culminating  struggle  of 
his  life.  We  may  well  understand  the  solemn  pause 
that  ensues,  the  retirement  to  solitude,  thereto  review 
the  position  before  the  only  court  of  appeal  that  re- 
mains to  him, — that  inward  voice  of  conscience,  that 
inward  sense  of  right,  which  is  the  immediate  pres- 
ence of  God  within.  But  we  never  doubt  what  the 
decision  will  be.  "  I  must  obey  God  rather  than  man ; 
I  cannot  recognize  that  this  voice — even  of  God's 
vicegerent — is  the  voice  of  God.  Necessity  laid  on 
me,  which  I  dare  not  gainsay,  to  preach  this  Gospel 
of  God's  kingdom,  as,  even  on  eartrrfa  kingdom  of 
righteousness,  truth,  and  love." 

Such  is  one  phase  of  the  Savonarola  here  portrayed 
to  us  ;  and  herein  is  placed  before  us  the  secret  of  his 


50  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

greatness  and  strength.  This  firm  assertion  of  the 
highest  right  his  consciousness  recognizes,  amid  all 
difficulty,  hardness,  and  disappointment  ;  this  per- 
sistent endeavor  by  precept  and  example  to  rouse 
men  to  a  truer  and  better  life  than  their  own  varied 
self-seeking  ;  this  unflinching  struggle  against  every- 
thing false,  mean,  and  base, — these  things  make  him 
a  power  in  the  State  before  which  King  and  Pope 
are  compelled  to  bow  in  respect  or  fear.  Over  even 
the  larger  nature  of  Romola  his  words  at  this  time 
have  sway, — the  sway  which  more  distinct  perception 
of  a// the  relations  of  duty  gives  over  a  spirit  equally 
earnest  to  seek  the  right  alone. 

In  time  there  comes  a  change,  almost  impercep- 
tibly, working  from  within  outwards,  first  clearly 
announced  through  the  changed  relations  of  others 
to  him,  though  these  are  but  symptomatic  of  change 
within  himself.  The  political  strength  of  his  sway 
is  broken,  its  moral  strength  is  all  but  gone.  The 
nature  of  the  change  in  himself  he  unwittingly 
defines  in  those  last  words  to  Romola  already  quoted, 
"The  cause  of  my  party  is  the  cause  of  God's  king- 
dom." Various  external  circumstances  have  con- 
tributed to  bring  about  the  result  thus  indicated  ;  but 
on  these  it  is  unnecessary  to  dwell.  God's  kingdom 
has  lowered  and  narrowed  itself  into  his  party.  The 
spirit  of  the  partisan  has  begun  to  overshadow  the 
purity  of  the  patriot,  to  contract  and  abase  the  wide 
aim  of  the  Christian ;  and  he  has  come  to  substitute  a 
law  of  right  modified  to  suit  the  interest  of  the  party, 


Romola  5 1 

for  that  law  which  is  absolute  and  unconditional. 
He  whom  we  listen  to  in  the  Duomo  as  the  fervid  pro- 
claimer  of  God's  justice,  stands  now  before  us  as  the 
perverter  of  even  human  justice  and  human  law. 
The  very  nobleness  of  Bernardo  del  Nero  strengthens 
the  necessity  that  he  should  die,  that  the  Mediceans 
may  be  thus  deprived  of  the  support  of  his  stainless 
honor  and  high  repute ;  though  to  compass  this 
death  the  law  of  mercy  which  Savonarola  himself  has 
instituted  must  be  put  aside.  As  we  listen  to  the 
miserable  sophistries  by  which  he  strives  to  justify 
himself — far  less  to  Romola  than  before  his  own  ac- 
cusing soul — we  feel  that  the  greatness  of  his  strength 
has  departed  from  him.  All  thenceforth  is  deepening 
confusion  without  and  within.  Less  and  less  can  he 
control  the  violences  of  his  party,  till  these  provoke 
all  but  universal  revolt,  and  the  "  Masque  of  the 
Furies  "  ends  his  public  career.  The  uncertainties  and 
vacillations  of  the  "  Trial  by  Fire,"  the  long  series 
of  confessions  and  retractions,  historically  true,  are 
still  more  morally  and  spiritually  significant.  They 
tell  of  inward  confusion  and  perplexity,  generated 
through  that  partial  "self-pleasing"  which,  under 
guise  so  insidious,  had  stolen  into  the  inner  life ; 
of  faith  and  trust  perturbed  and  obscured  thereby; 
of  dark  doubts  engendered  whether  God  had, 
indeed,  ever  spoken  by  him.  We  feel  it  is  meet 
the  great  life  should  close,  not  as  that  of  the 
triumphant  martyr,  but  amid  the  depths  of  that 
self-renouncing    penitence     through    which    once 


5  2  The  EtJiics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

more  the  soul  resumes  its  full  relation  to  the 
divine. 

We  have  now  come  to  the  one  great  poem  George 
Eliot  has  as  yet  given  to  the  world,  and  which  we 
have  no  hesitation  in  placing  above  every  poetical 
or  poetico-dramatic  work  of  the  day — "  The  Spanish 
Gypsy."  Less  upon  it  than  upon  any  of  its  prede- 
cessors can  we  attempt  any  general  criticism.  Our 
attention  must  be  confined  mainly  to  two  of  the 
great  central  figures  of  the  drama — Fedalma  herself, 
and  Don  Silva ;  the  representatives  respectively  of 
humanity  accepting  the  highest,  noblest,  most  self- 
devoting  life  presented  to  it,  simultaneously  with 
life's  deepest  pain  ;  and  of  humanity  choosing  some- 
thing— in  itself  pure  and  noble,  but — short  of  the 
highest. 

Fedalma  is  essentially  a  poetic  Romola,  but  Rom- 
ola  so  modified  by  circumstances  and  temperament 
as  to  be  superficially  contrasting.  She  is  the  Romola 
of  a  different  race  and  clime,  a  different  nurture,  and 
an  era  which,  chronologically  nearly  the  same,  is  in 
reality  far  removed.  For  the  warm  and  swift  Italian 
we  have  the  yet  warmer  and  swifter  Gypsy  blood ; 
for  the  long  line  of  noble  ancestry,  descent  from  an 
outcast  and  degraded  race  ;  for  the  nurture  amid  the 
environments,  almost  in  the  creed  of  classicism,  the 
upbringing  under  noble  female  charge  in  a  household 
of  that  land  where  the  Roman  Church  had  just 
sealed  its  full  supremacy  by  the  establishment  of  the 
Inquisition ;    for  the  era  when  Italian  subtleties  of 


Spanish  Gypsy  53 

thought,  policy,  and  action  had  attained  their  highest 
elaboration,  the  grander  and  simpler  time  when 

"  Castilian  gentlemen 
Choose  not  their  task — they  choose  to  do  it  well." 

But  howsoever  modified  through  these  and  other 
accessories  of  existence  are  the  more  superficial 
aspects  of  character,  and  the  whole  outward  form 
and  course  of  life,  the  great  vital  principle  is  the 
same  in  both ; — clearness  to  see,  nobleness  to  choose, 
steadfastness  to  pursue,  the  highest  good  that  life 
presents,  through  whatsoever  anguish,  darkness, 
and  death  of  all  joy  and  hope  the  path  may  lead. 

On  Fedalma's  first  appearance  on  the  wonderful 
scene  upon  the  Placa,  she  presents  herself  as  emphati- 
cally what  her  poet-worshipper  Juan  hymns  her,  the 
"child  of  light" — a  creature  so  tremulously  sensitive 
to  all  beauty,  brightness,  and  joy,  that  it  seems  as  if 
she  could  not  co-exist  with  darkness  and  sorrow.  But 
even  then  we  have  intimated  to  us  that  vital  quality 
in  her  nature  which  makes  all  self-sacrifice  possible ; 
and  which  assures  us  that,  whenever  her  life-choice 
shall  come  to  lie  between  enjoyment  and  right,  she 
shall  choose  the  higher  though  the  harder  path.  For 
her  joy  is  essentially  the  joy  of  sympathy;  mere  self 
has  no  place  in  it.  In  her  exquisite  justification  of 
the  Placa  scene  to  Don  Silva,  she  herself  defines  it 
in  one  line  better  than  all  words  of  ours  can  do — 

"  /was  not,  but  joy  was,  and  love  and  triumph." 


54  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliof  s  Works 

She  is  but  a  form  and  presence  in  which  the  joy,  not 
merely  of  the  fair  sunset  scene,  but  primarily  and 
emphatically  of  the  human  hearts  around  her,  en- 
shrines itself.  It  has  no  free  life  in  herself  apart  from 
others;  it  must  inevitably  die  if  shut  out  from  this 
tremulousness  of  human  sympathy.  And  we  know  it 
shall  give  place  to  a  sorrow  correspondingly  sensitive, 
intense,  and  absorbing,  whenever  the  young  bright 
spirit  is  brought  face  to  face  with  human  sorrow. 
Even  while  we  gaze  on  her  as  the  embodied  joy,  and 
love,  and  triumph  of  the  scene,  the  shadow  begins  to 
fall.  The  band  of  Gypsy  prisoners  passes  by,  and  her 
eyes  meet  those  eyes  whose  gaze,  not  to  be  so  read  by 
any  nature  lower  and  more  superficial  than  hers — 

"  Seemed  to  say  he  bore 
The  pain  of  those  who  never  could  be  saved." 

Joy  collapses  at  once  within  her ;  the  light  fades 
away  from  the  scene;  the  very  sunset  glory  becomes 
dull  and  cold.  We  are  shown  from  the  first  that  no 
life  can  satisfy  this  "child  of  light"  which  shall  not 
be  a  life  in  the  fullest  and  deepest  unison  to  which 
circumstances  shall  call  her  with  the  life  of  humanity. 
That  true  geatness  of  our  humanity  is  already  active 
within  her,  which  makes  it  impossible  she  should 
live  or  die  to  herself  alone.  Her  destiny  is  already 
marked  out  by  a  force  of  which  circumstance  may 
determine  the  special  manifestation,  but  which  no 
force  of  circumstance  can  turn  aside  from  its  course; 
the  force  of  a  living  spiritual  power  within  herself 


Spanish  Gypsy  55 

which  constrains  that  she  shall  be  faithful  to  the 
highest  good  which  life  shall  place  before  her. 

We  would  fain  linger  for  a  little  over  the  scenes 
which  follow  between  her  and  Don  Silva  ;  portray- 
ing as  they  do  a  love  so  intense  in  its  virgin  ten- 
derness, and  so  spiritually  pure  and  high.  It  is  the 
same  "  child  of  light "  that  comes  before  us  here  ; 
the  same  tremulous  living  in  the  light  and  joy  of  her 
love,  but  also  the  same  impossibility  of  living  even 
in  its  light  and  joy  apart  from  those  of  her  beloved. 
And  not  from  his  only:  that  passion  which  in  more 
ordinary  natures  so  almost  inevitably  contracts  the 
sphere  of  the  sympathies,  in  Fedalma  expands  and 
enlarges  it.  Amid  all  the  intoxicating  sweetness  of 
her  bright  young  joys,  the  loving  heart  turns  again 
and  again  to  the  thought  of  human  sorrow  and 
wrong ;  and  among  all  the  hopes  that  gladden  her 
future,  one  is  never  absent  from  her  thoughts — "  Oh  ! 
I  shall  have  much  power  as  well  as  joy;"  power 
to  redress  the  wrong  and  to  assuage  the  suffering. 
Half  playfully,  half  seriously,  she  asks  the  question — 

"  But  is  it  what  we  love,  or  how  we  love, 
That  makes  true  good  ?  " 

Most  seriously  and  solemnly  is  the  question  answered 
through  her  after-life.  To  love  less  wholly,  purely, 
unselfishly — yet  still  holding  the  outward  claims  of 
that  love  subordinate  to  a  possible  still  higher  and 
more  imperative  claim — to  such  a  nature  as  hers  is 
no  love  and  no  true  good  at  all.     And  this  thirst  for 


56  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

the  highest  alike  in  love  and  life  includes  her  lover 
as  well  as  herself.  The  darkest  terror  that  overtakes 
her  in  all  those  after-scenes  comes  when  he  is  about 
to  abjure  country,  honor,  and  God  on  her  account. 
To  her,  the  Gypsy,  without  a  country,  without  a 
faith  save  faithfulness  to  the  highest  right,  without 
a  God  such  as  the  Spaniards'  God,  this  might  be 
a  small  thing.  But  for  him,  Spanish  noble  and 
Christian  knight,  she  knows  it  to  be  abnegation  of 
nobleness,  treason  to  duty,  dishonor  and  shame. 
She  is  jealous  for  his  truth,  but  the  more  that  its 
breach  might  seem  to  secure  her  own  happiness. 

The  first  and  decisive  scene  with  her  Gypsy  father 
is  so  true  in  conception,  and  so  full  of  poetic  force 
and  grandeur  throughout,  that  no  analysis,  nothing 
short  of  extracting  the  whole,  can  do  justice  to  it. 
Seldom  before  has  art  in  any  guise  placed  the  grand, 
heroic,  self-devoting  purpose  of  a  grand,  heroic,  self- 
devoting  nature  more  impressively  before  us  than  in 
the  Gypsy  chief.  It  is  easy  to  think  and  speak  of 
such  an  enterprise  as  Quixotic  and  impossible. 
There  is  a  stage  in  every  great  enterprise  humanity 
has  ever  undertaken  when  it  might  be  so  character- 
ized :  and  the  greatest  of  all  enterprises,  when  an 
obscure  Jew  stood  forth  to  become  light  and  life, 
not  to  a  tribe  or  a  race,  but  to  humanity,  was  to  the 
judgers  according  to  appearance  of  His  day,  the 
most  Quixotic  and  impossible  of  all. 

It  has  been  felt  and  urged  as  an  objection  to  this 
scene,  and  consequently  to  the  whole  scheme  of  the 


Spanish  Gypsy  57 

drama,  that  such  influence,  so  immediately  exerted 
over  Fedalma  by  a  father  whom  till  then  she  had 
never  known,  is  unnatural  if  not  impossible.  If  it 
were  only  as  father  and  daughter  they  thus  stand 
face  to  face,  there  might  be  force  in  the  objection. 
But  this  very  partially  and  inadequately  expresses 
the  relation  between  these  two.  It  is  the  father 
possessed  with  a  lofty,  self-devoting  purpose,  who 
calls  to  share  in,  and  to  aid  it,  the  daughter  whose 
nature  is  strung  to  the  same  lofty,  self-devoting  pitch. 
It  is  the  saviour  of  an  oppressed,  degraded,  outcast 
race,  who  calls  to  share  his  mission  her  who  could 
feel  the  brightness  of  her  joy  of  love  brightened  still 
more  by  the  hope  of  assuaging  sorrow  and  redress- 
ing evil.  It  is  the  appeal  through  the  father  of  that 
which  is  highest  and  noblest  in  humanity  to  that 
which  is  most  deeply  inwrought  into  the  daughter's 
soul.  To  a  narrower  and  meaner  nature  the  appeal 
would  have  been  addressed  by  any  father  in  vain  : 
for  a  narrower  and  meaner  end,  the  appeal  even  by 
such  a  father  would  have  been  addressed  to  Fedalma 
in  vain.  With  her  it  cannot  but  prevail,  unless  she 
is  content  to  forego — not  merely  her  father's  love 
and  trust,  but — her  own  deepest  and  truest  life. 

The  "child  of  light,"  the  embodied  "joy  and  love 
and  triumph  "  of  the  Placa,  is  called  on  to  forego  all 
outward  and  possible  hope  on  behalf  of  that  love 
which  is  for  her  the  concentration  of  all  light  and  joy 
and  triumph.  Very  touching  are  those  heart-wrung 
pleadings  by  which  she  strives  to  avert  the  sacrifice; 


58  The  EtJiics  of  George  Eliot s  Works 

and  we  are  oppressed  almost  as  by  the  presence  of 
the  calm,  loveless,  hateless  Fate  of  the  old  Greek 
tragedy,  as  Zarca's  inexorable  logic  puts  them  one  by 
one  aside,  and  leaves  her  as  sole  alternatives  the 
offering  up  every  hope,  every  present  and  possible 
joy  of  the  love  which  is  entwined  with  her  life,  or  the 
turning  away  from  that  highest  course  to  which  he 
calls  her.  As  her  own  young  hopes  die  out  under 
the  pressure  of  that  deepest  energy  of  her  nature 
to  which  he  appeals,  it  can  hardly  be  but  that  all 
hope  should  grow  dull  and  cold  within — hope 
even  with  regard  to  the  issue  of  that  mission  to 
which  she  is  called ;  and  it  is  thus  that  she  accepts 
the  call : — 

"  Yes,  say  that  we  shall  fail.     I  will  not  count 

On  aught  but  being  faithful. 

I  will  seek  nothing  but  to  shun  base  joy. 

The  saints  were  cowards  who  stood  by  to  see 

Christ  crucified.     They  should  have  thrown  themselves 

Upon  the  Roman  spears,  and  died  in  vain. 

The  grandest  death,  to  die  in  vain,  for  love 

Greater  than  rules  the  courses  of  the  world. 

Such  death  shall  be  my  bridegroom.     .     .     . 

Oh  love  !  you  were  my  crown.     No  other  crown 

Is  aught  but  thorns  on  this  poor  woman's  brow." 

In  this  spirit  she  goes  forth  to  meet  her  doom, 
faithfulness  thenceforth  the  one  aim  and  struggle  of 
her  life  —  faithfulness  to  be  maintained  under  the 
pressure  of  such  anguish  of  blighted  love  and 
stricken  hope  as  only  natures  so  pure,  tender,  and 
deep  can  know — faithfulness  clung  to  with  but  the 


Spanish  Gypsy  59 

calmer  steadfastness  when  the  last  glimmer  of  mere 
hope  is  gone. 

The  successive  scenes  in  the  Gypsy  camp  with 
Juan,  with  her  father,  and  with  the  Gypsy  girl  Hinda, 
bring  before  us  at  once  the  intensity  of  her  suffering 
and  the  depth  of  her  steadfastness.  Trembling 
beneath  the  burden  laid  upon  her, — laid  on  her  by 
no  will  of  another,  but  by  the  earnestness  of  her  own 
humanity, — we  see  her  seeking  through  Juan  what- 
ever of  possible  comfort  can  come  through  tidings  of 
him  she  has  left ;  in  the  strong  and  noble  nature  of 
her  father,  the  consolation  of  at  least  hoping  that 
her  sacrifice  shall  not  be  all  in  vain ;  and  in  Hinda's 
untutored,  instinctive  faithfulness  to  her  name  and 
race,  support  to  her  own  resolve.  But  no  pressure  of 
her  suffering,  no  despondency  as  to  the  result  of  all, 
no  thought  of  the  lonely  life  before  her,  filled  ever- 
more with  those  yearnings  towards  the  past  and  the 
vanished,  can  turn  her  back  from  her  chosen  path. 
"  Father,  my  soul  is  weak, 

But  if  I  cannot  plant  resolve  on  hope, 

It  will  stand  firm  on  certainty  of  woe. 

.     .     .     Hopes  have  precarious  life  ; 

But  faithfulness  can  feed  on  suffering, 

And  knows  no  disappointment.     Trust  in  me. 

If  it  were  needed,  this  poor  trembling  hand 

Should  grasp  the  torch — strive  not  to  let  it  fall, 

Though  it  were  burning  down  close  to  my  flesh. 

No  beacon  lighted  yet.     I  still  should  hear 

Through  the  damp  dark  the  cry  of  gasping  swimmers. 

Father,  I  will  be  true." 


60  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

The  scenes  which  follow,  first  with  her  lover,  then 
with  her  lover  and  her  father  together,  present  the 
culmination  at  once  of  her  trial  and  of  her  steadfast- 
ness. Hitherto  she  has  made  her  choice,  as  it  were, 
in  the  bodily  absence  of  that  love,  the  abnegation  of 
whose  every  hope  gives  its  sharpness  to  her  crown  of 
thorns.  Now  the  light  and  the  darkness,  the  joy  and 
the  sorrow,  the  love  whose  earthly  life  she  is  slaying, 
and  the  life  of  lonely,  ceaseless,  lingering  pain  before 
her,  stand,  as  it  were,  visibly  and  tangibly  side  by 
side.  On  the  one  hand  her  father,  with  his  noble 
presence,  his  calm,  unquestioning  self-devotion,  his 
fervid  eloquence,  and  his  withering  scorn  of  every- 
thing false  and  base,  represents  that  deepest  in 
humanity — and  in  her — which  impels  to  seek  and  to 
cling  to  the  highest  good.  On  the  other  her  lover, 
associated  with  all  the  deeply-cherished  life,  joy,  and 
hope  of  her  past,  pleads  with  his  earnest,  impas- 
sioned, almost  despairing  eloquence,  for  her  return 
to  happiness.  More  nobly  beautiful  by  far  in  her 
sad  steadfastness  than  when  she  glowed  before  us  as 
the  "child  of  light"  upon  the  Plaga, — 

"Her  choice  was  made. 

Slowly  she  moved  to  choose  sublimer  pain, 

Yearning,  yet  shrinking :     .     .     . 

.     .     .     firm  to  slay  her  joy, 

That  cut  her  heart  with  smiles  beneath  the  knife, 

Like  a  sweet  babe  foredoomed  by  prophecy." 


Spanish  Gypsy  61 

To  all  the  despairing  pleadings  and  appeals  of  her 
lover  she  has  but  one  answer  : — 

"  You  must  forgive  Fedalma  all  her  debt. 
She  is  quite  beggared.     If  she  gave  herself, 
'Twould  be  a  self  corrupt  with  stifled  thoughts 
Of  a  forsaken  better,     .     .     . 
Oh,  all  my  bliss  was  in  our  love,  but  now 
I  may  not  taste  it ;  some  deep  energy 
Compels  me  to  choose  hunger." 

What  that  energy  is,  we  surely  do  not  need  to  ask. 
It  is  that  deep  principle  of  all  true  life  which  repre- 
sents the  affinity — latent,  oppressed  by  circum- 
stances, repressed  by  sin,  but  always  there — between 
our  human  nature  and  the  Divine,  and  through 
subjection  to  which  we  reassume  our  birthright 
as  "  the  sons  of  God; "  conscience  to  see  and  will  to 
choose — not  what  shall  please  ourselves,  but — the 
highest  and  purest  aim  that  life  presents  to  us. 

It  is  the  same  "  deep  energy,"  the  same  inexorable 
necessity  of  her  nature,  that  she  should  put  away 
from  her  all  beneath  the  best  and  purest,  which 
originates  the  sudden  terror  that  smiles  upon  her 
when  Don  Silva,  for  her  sake,  breaks  loose  from 
country  and  faith,  from  honor  and  God.  There  is 
no  triumph  in  the  greatness  of  the  love  thus  dis- 
played ;  no  rejoicing  in  prospect  of  the  outward 
fulfilment  of  the  love  thus  made  possible;  no  room 
for  any  emotion  but  the  dark  chill  foreboding  of  a 
separation  thus  begun,  wider  than  all  distance,  and 
more  profound  and  hopeless  than  death.     The  sepa- 


62  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

ration  of  aims  no  longer  single,  of  souls  no  longer 
one ;  of  his  life  falling,  though  for  her  sake,  from 
its  best  and  highest,  and  therefore  ceasing,  inevitably 
and  hopelessly,  fully  to  respond  to  hers. 

"  What  the  Zincala  may  not  quit  for  you 
I  cannot  joy  that  you  should  quit  for  her." 

The  last  temptation  has  now  been  met  and 
conquered.  Henceforth  we  see  Fedalma  only  in 
her  calm,  sad,  unwavering  steadfastness,  bearing 
without  moan  or  outward  sign,  the  burden  of  her 
cross.  Not  even  her  father's  dying  charge  is  needed 
to  confirm  her  purpose,  to  fix  her  life  in  a  self- 
devotedness  already  fixed  beyond  all  relaxing  and 
all  change.  With  his  death,  indeed,  the  last  faint 
hope  fades  utterly  away  that  his  great  purpose  shall 
be  achieved ;  and  she  thenceforth  is 

"  But  as  the  funeral  urn  that  bears 
The  ashes  of  a  leader." 

But  necessity  lies  only  the  more  upon  her — that  most 
imperious  of  all  necessities  which  originates  in  her 
own  innate  nobleness — that  she  should  be  true. 
When  first  she  accepted  this  burden  of  her  noble- 
ness and  her  sorrow,  she  had  said — 

"  I  will  not  count 
On  aught  but  being  faithful  ;  " 

and  faithfulness  without  hope — truthfulness  without 
prospect,  almost  without  possibility,  of  tangible  fulfil- 
ment—  is  all  that  lies  before  her  now.     She  accepts 


Spanish  Gypsy  63 

it  in  a  mournful  stillness,  not  of  despair,  and  not  of 
resignation,  but  simply  as  the  only  true  accomplish- 
ment of  her  life  that  now  remains. 

The  last  interview  with  Don  Silva  almost  oppresses 
us  with  its  deep  severe  solemnity.  No  bitterness  of 
separation  broods  over  it :  the  true  bitterness  of 
separation  fell  upon  her  when  her  lover  became  false 
to  himself  in  the  vain  imagination  that,  so  doing,  he 
could  by  any  possibility  be  fully  true  to  her.  "  Our 
marriage  rite" — thus  she  addresses  the  repentant 
and  returning  renegade — 

"Our  marriage  rite 
Is  our  resolve  that  we  will  each  be  true 
To  high  allegiance,  higher  than  our  love  ;  " 

and  it  is  thus  she  answers  for  herself,  and  teaches 
him  to  answer,  that  question  asked  in  the  fullest  and 
fairest  flush  of  her  love's  joys  and  hopes — 

"  But  is  it  what  we  love,  or  how  we  love, 
That  makes  true  good  ?  " 

The  tremulous  sensitiveness  of  her  former  life  has 
now  passed  beyond  all  outward  manifestation,  lost 
in  absorbing  self-devotedness  and  absorbing  sorrow; 
and  every  thought,  feeling,  and  word  is  characterized 
by  an  ineffable  depth  of  calm. 

Those  closing  lines,  whose  still,  deep,  melancholy 
cadence  lingers  upon  ear  and  heart  as  do  the 
concluding  lines  of  "Paradise  Lost" — 

"  Straining  he  gazed,  and  knew  not  if  he  gazed 
On  aught  but  blackness  overhung  with  stars  " — 


64  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

tell  us  how  Fedalma  passes  away  from  the  sight,  the 
life,  and  all  but  the  heart  of  Don  Silva.  Not  thus 
does  she  pass  away  from  our  gaze.  One  star  over- 
hanging the  blackness,  clear  and  calm  beyond  all 
material  brightness  of  earth  and  firmament,  for  us 
marks  out  her  course  :  the  star  of  unwavering  faith, 
unfaltering  truth,  self-devotion  to  the  highest  and 
holiest  that  knows  no  change  for  ever. 

"A  man  of  high-wrought  strain,  fastidious 
In  his  acceptance,  dreading  all  delight 
That  speedy  dies  and  turns  to  carrion. 

A  nature  half-transformed,  with  qualities 

That  oft  bewrayed  each  other,  elements 

Not  blent  but  struggling,  breeding  strange  effects. 

A  spirit  framed 

Too  proudly  special  for  obedience, 

Too  subtly  pondering  for  mastery  : 

Born  of  a  goddess  with  a  mortal  sire ; 

Heir  of  flesh-fettered  weak  divinity. 

.     .     .     A  nature  quiveringly  poised 

In  reach  of  storms,  whose  qualities  may  turn 

To  murdered  virtues  that  still  walk  as  ghosts 

Within  the  shuddering  soul  and  shriek  remorse." 

Such  is  Duke  Silva :  and  in  this  portraiture  is 
upfolded  the  dark  and  awful  story  of  his  life.  Noble, 
generous,  chivalrous ;  strong  alike  by  mind  and  by 
heart  to  cast  off  the  hard  and  cruel  superstition  of 
his  age  and  country ;  capable  of  a  love  pure,  deep, 
trustful,  and  to  all  appearance  self-forgetting,  beyond 
what  men  are  usually  capable  of;  trenching  in  every 


Spanish  Gypsy  65 

quality  close  on  the  true  heroic  :  he  yet  falls  as  abso- 
lutely short  of  it  as  a  man  can  do  who  has  not,  like 
Tito  Melema,  by  his  own  will  coalescing  with  the  un- 
changeable laws  of  right,  foreordained  himself  to  utter 
and  hopeless  spiritual  death.  It  was,  perhaps,  need- 
ful he  should  be  portrayed  as  thus  nearly  approach- 
ing true  nobility ;  otherwise  such  perfect  love  from 
such  a  nature  as  Fedalma's  were  inexplicable,  almost 
impossible.  But  this  was  still  more  needful  toward 
the  fulfilment  of  the  author's  purpose:  the  showing 
how  the  one  deadly  plague-spot  shall  weaken  the 
strongest  and  vitiate  the  purest  life.  Every  element 
of  the  heroic  is  there  except  that  one  element  without 
which  the  truly  heroic  is  impossible :  he  cannot  "deny 
himself."  Superficially,  indeed  it  might  seem  that 
self  was  not  the  object  of  his  regard,  but  Fedalma: 
and  by  much  of  the  distorted,  distorting,  and  radi- 
cally immoral  fiction  of  the  day,  his  sacrifice  of  every- 
thing for  her  love's  sake  would  have  been  held  up 
to  us  as  the  crowning  glory  of  his  heroism,  and  the 
consummation  of  his  claims  upon  our  sympathy  and 
admiration.  George  Eliot  has  seen  with  a  different 
and  a  clearer  eye:  and  in  Duke  Silva's  placing — not 
his  love,  but — the  earthly  fulfilment  of  his  love  above 
honor  and  faith,  she  finds  at  the  root  the  same  vital 
corruption  of  self-pleasing  which  conducts  Tito 
Melema  through  baseness  on  baseness,  and  treason 
after  treason,  to  the  lowest  deep  of  perdition. 

Throughout  the  first  wonderful  love-scene  with 
Fedalma,  the  vital  difference,  the  essential  antagon- 


66  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot s  Works 

ism  between  these  two  natures,  is  revealed  to  us 
through  a  hundred  subtile  and  delicate  touches,  and 
we  are  made  to  feel  that  there  is  a  depth  in  hers 
beyond  the  power  of  his  to  reach.  Chivalrous,  ab- 
sorbing, tyrannizing  over  his  whole  being,  even  pure 
as  his  love  is,  it  far  fails  of  the  deeper  and  holier 
purity  of  hers.  It  shudders  at  the  possibility  of  even 
outward  soil  upon  her  loveliness  ;  but  it  does  so 
primarily  because  such  soil  would  react  upon  his 
self-love : — 

"  Have  /not  made  your  place  and  dignity 
The  very  height  of  my  ambition  ?  " 

Her  nobler  nature  recoils  with  chill  foreboding  terror 
from  his  first  breach  of  trust,  because  it  is  a  fall  from  his 
truest  and  highest  right.  His  answer  to  her  question 
already  quoted,  reveals  a  love  which  the  world's  judg- 
ment may  rank  as  the  best  and  noblest,  but  reveals  a 
principle  which,  applied  to  aught  beneath  the  only 
and  supremest  good,  makes  love  only  a  more  insidious 
and  deeply  corrupting  form  of  self-pleasing:  "  'Tis 
what  I  love  determines  how  I  love."  Love  is  his 
"highest  allegiance;"  and  it  becomes  ere  long  an 
allegiance  before  which  truth,  faith,  and  honor  give 
way,  and  guidance  and  control  of  conscience  are 
swept  before  the  fierce  storm  of  self-willed  passion 
that  brooks  no  interposition  between  itself  and  its  aim. 
We  are  not  attempting  a  formal  review  of  this  work ; 
and  as  we  have  passed  without  notice  the  powerful 
embodiment  in  Father  Isidor  of  whatever  was  true 


Spanish  Gypsy  67 

and  earnest  in  the  Inquisition,  we  must  also  pass  very 
slightly  over  the  interview  with  a  still  more  remark- 
able creation — the  Hebrew  physician  and  astrologer 
Sephardo — except  as  we  have  in  this  interview 
further  illustration  of  the  character  of  Don  Silva, 
and  of  the  direction  in  which  the  self-love  of  passion 
is  impelling  him.  We  see  conscience  seeking  from 
Sephardo — and  seeking  in  vain — confirmation  of 
the  purpose  already  determined  in  his  own  heart ; 
striving  towards  self-justification  by  every  sophistry 
the  passion-blinded  intellect  can  suggest;  struggling 
to  transfer  to  another  the  wrong,  if  not  the  shame, 
of  his  own  contemplated  breach  of  trust ;  endeavor- 
ing to  take  refuge  in  stellar  and  fatalistic  agencies 
from  his  own  " nature  quiveringly  poised"  between 
good  and  evil ;  and  at  last,  merging  all  sophistries  and 
all  influences  in  the  fierce  resolve  of  the  self-love 
which  has  made  Fedalma  the  one  aim,  glory,  and 
crown  of  his  life.  Throughout  all  the  apparent 
struggle  and  uncertainty,  we  never  doubt  how  all 
shall  end.  Amid  all  the  appearances  of  vacillation, 
all  the  seeking  external  aid  and  furtherance,  we  see 
that  the  resolve  is  fixed,  that  the  eager  passionate 
self  which  indentifies  Fedalma  as  its  inalienable  right 
and  property  will  prevail — prevail  even  to  set  aside 
every  obstacle  of  duty  and  right  which  shall  seem 
to  interpose  between  it  and  realization. 

Equally  and  profoundly  characteristic  is  the  position 
he  mentally  takes  up  with  regard  to  the  Gypsy  chief, 
as  well  as  Fedalma  herself.     Not  simply  or  primarily 


68  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

from  mere  arrogance  of  rank  does  he  assume  it  as  a 
certainty  that  he  has  but  to  find  Fedalma  to  win  her 
back  to  his  side ;  that  he  has  but  to  lay  before  Zarca 
the  offer  of  his  rank,  wealth,  and  influence  on  behalf 
of  the  outcast  race,  to  win  him  to  forego  his  purpose 
and  to  surrender  the  daughter  whom  he  has  called  to 
the  same  lofty  aim.  It  is  because  of  the  impossibility, 
swayed  and  tossed  by  the  self-will  of  passion  as  he  is, 
ofTiis  rising  to  the  height  of  their  nobleness  ;  the 
impossibility  of  his  realizing  natures  so  possessed 
by  a  great,  heroic,  self-devoting  thought,  that  hope, 
joy,  happiness  become  of  little  or  no  account  in  the 
scale,  and  even  what  is  called  success  dwindles  into 
insignifiance,  or  fades  away  altogether  from  regard. 
The  first  betrayal  of  his  trust,  the  first  fall  from 
truth  and  honor,  has  been  accomplished.  Con- 
science has  begun  to  succumb  to  self — self  under 
the  guise  of  Fedalma  and  the  overmastering  self-will 
which  refuses  to  resign  his  claim  upon  her.  He  has 
secretly  deserted  his  post,  transferring  to  another's 
hands  the  trust  which  was  his,  and  only  his.  A  slight 
offence  it  may  appear — a  mere  error  of  judgment 
swayed  by  devoted  love — to  leave  for  a  day  or  two 
when  no  danger  seems  specially  impending,  and  to 
leave  in  the  hands  of  the  trusted  and  loving  friends 
the  charge  committed  to  him.  A  slight  offence,  but 
it  has  been  done  in  direct  violation  of  conscience, 
and  so  in  practical  abnegation  of  God.  Therefore 
the  flood-gate  is  opened,  and  all  sweeps  swiftly, 
resistlessly,  remedilessly  on  towards  catastrophe. 


Spanish  Gypsy  69 

The  tender  beauty  of  the  brief  scene  with  Fedalma 
is  for  her  overcast,  and  hope,  the  highest  hope,  dies 
out  within  her,  when  she  knows  that  her  lover,  in 
apparent  faithfulness  to  her,  has  been  false  to  him- 
self.    From  that  hour  for  her, 

"  Our  joy  is  dead,  and  only  smiles  on  us, 
A  loving  shade  from  out  the  place  of  tombs." 

Then  comes  the  interposition  of  the  Gypsy  chief, 
Fedalma's  sweet  sad  steadfastness  to  her  "  high 
allegiance,  higher  than  our  love  ; "  the  brief  moment 

O  7  O  ' 

of  suspense,  when 

"  His  will  was  prisoner  to  the  double  grasp 
Of  rage  and  hesitancy  ;  " — 

and  then  before  the  stormful  revulsion  of  baffled  and 
despairing  passion  all  else  is  swept  away,  and  there 
only  survives  in  the  self-clouded  mind  and  soul  the 
fixed  resolve  to  secure  that  which  for  him  has 
come  to  overmaster  all  allegiance.  Strange  and  sad 
beyond  all  description  are  the  sophistries  under 
which  the  sinner  strives  to  veil  his  sin, — by  which 
to  silence  that  still  small  voice  which  will  not  be 
hushed  amid  all  that  inward  moil.  Fedalma's  earnest 
pleadings  with  his  better  self,  Zarca's  calm,  pitying, 
almost  sorrowful  scorn — 

"Our  poor  faith 
Allows  not  rightful  choice  save  of  the  right 
Our  birth  has  made  for  us  " — 


yo  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot s  Works 

fall  unheeded  amid  that  fierce  tempest  of  aroused 
self-will ;  and  the  Spanish  knight  and  noble  of  that 
very  age  when 

"  Castilian  gentlemen 
Choose  not  their  task — they  choose  to  do  it  well," 

becomes  the  renegade,  abjuring  and  forswearing 
country,  honor,  and  God. 

We  have  hitherto  abstained  from  quotation,  except 
where  necessary  to  illustrate  our  remarks.  But  we 
cannot  forbear  extracting  from  this  scene  the  most 
exquisite  of  the  many  beautiful  lyrics  scattered 
throughout  the  poem,  expressing,  as  it  does,  with  a 
mystic  power  and  depth  beyond  what  the  most 
elaborate  commentary  could  do,  the  all  but  hope- 
lessness of  return  from  such  a  fall  as  Don  Silva's  : — 

"  Push  off  the  boat, 

Quit,  quit  the  shore, 

The  stars  will  guide  us  back  : 
O  gathering  cloud, 
O  wide,  wide  sea, 

O  waves  that  keep  no  track  ! 

"  On  through  the  pines  ! 
The  pillared  woods, 

Where  silence  breathes  sweet  breath  : — 
O  labyrinth, 

O  sunless  gloom, 

The  other  side  of  death !  " 

In  the  scenes  which  follow  among  the  Gypsy 
guard,  both  that  with  Juan  and  the  lonely  night 
immediately  preceding  the  march,  the  terrible  reac- 


Spanish  Gypsy  j\ 

tion  has  already  begun  to  set  in.  The  "  quivering" 
poise  of  Don  Silva's  nature  makes  it  impossible  he 
should  rest  quiet  in  this  utterness  of  moral  and 
spiritual  fall.  Already  we  hear  and  see  the  "  mur- 
dered virtues  "  begin 

"  To  walk  as  ghosts 
Within  the  shuddering  soul  and  shriek  remorse." 

The  past  returns  on  him  with  tyrannous  power, — ■ 
early  associations,  the  taking  up  of  his  knightly 
vows  with  all  its  grand  religious  and  heroic  accom- 
paniments, the  delegated  and  accepted  trust  which 
he  has  by  forsaking  betrayed — 

"The  life  that  made 
His  full-formed  self,  as  the  impregnant  sap 
Of  years  successive  frames  the  full-branched  tree  " — 

all  come  back  with  stern  reproach  and  denunciation 
of  the  apostate  who,  in  hope  of  the  outward  realiza- 
tion of  a  human  love,  has  cast  off  and  forsworn  them 
all.  Fiercely  he  fronts  and  strives  to  silence  the 
accusing  throng.     Still  the  same  plea — 

"  My  sin  was  made  for  me 
By  men's  perverseness :  " 

still  the  same  impulses  of  mad,  despairing  self-asser- 
tion— 

"  I  have  a  right  to  choose  my  good  or  ill, 
A  right  to  damn  myself!  " — 

still  the  same  vain  imagination  that  union  is  any 
longer  possible  between  Fedalma's  high  self-abne- 


j 2  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

gating  truth  and  his  self-seeking  abnegation  of  all 
truth,  coupled  with  the  arrogant  assumption  that  he, 
morally  so  weak  and  fallen,  can  sustain  her  steadfast 
and  heroic  strength — "  I  with  my  love  will  be  her 
providence." 

When  with  the  fearful  Gypsy  chant  and  curse 

"  The  newer  oath 
Thrusts  its  loud  presence  on  him," 

we  feel  that  any  madness  of  act  the  wild  conflict 
within  may  dictate  has  become  possible  ;  and  we 
follow  to  that  presence  of  Fedalma  which  is  now  the 
only  goal  life  has  left  to  him,  prepared  for  such  out- 
break of  despair  as  shall  be  commensurate  with  a  life 
called  to  such  nobleness  of  deed  and  fallen  to  such  a 
depth  of  ruin.  We  see  the  trust  he  has  deserted  in 
the  hands  of  the  foe  against  whom  he  had  accepted 
commission  to  guard  it ;  his  friends  slaughtered  at 
the  post  he  had  forsaken  ;  himself  as  the  sworn  Zin- 
cala  in  alliance  with  the  enemy  and  slaughterer,  and 
associated  with  the  havoc  they  have  wrought.  The 
"  right  to  damn  "  himself  which  he  had  claimed  is  his 
in  all  its  bitterness  ;  and  when  he  would  charge  the 
self-damnation  upon  the  Gypsy  chief,  the  reply  of 
calm  withering  scorn  can  but  add  keener  pang  to  his 
awaking  remorse  :  the  self-damning 

"  Deed  was  done 
Before  you  took  your  oath,  or  reached  our  camp, 
Done  when  you  slipped  in  secret  from  the  post 
'Twas  yours  to  keep,  and  not  to  meditate 
If  others  might  not  fill  it." 


Spanish  Gypsy  73 

The  climax  of  his  revulsion,  remorse,  and  despair 
is  reached  when  the  Prior,  the  man  whom  he  has 
impeached  as  the  true  author  of  all  his  sin,  is  led 
forth  to  die.  Then  all  sophistries  are  swept  away, 
and  the  full  import  of  his  deed  glares  up  before  him, 
and  its  import  as  his,  only  and  wholly  his.  Zarca,  in 
his  high  self-possession  of  soul,  almost  pitying  while 
he  cannot  but  despise,  presents  a  fitting  object  on 
which  all  the  fierce  conflicting  passions  of  wrath,  self- 
accusing  remorse,  and  despair,  may  vent  themselves ; 
and  the  sudden  and  treacherous  deed,  which 

"  Strangles  one 
Whom  ages  watch  for  vainly." 

gives  also  to  Don  Silva  himself  to  carry 

"  For  ever  with  him  what  he  fled — 
Her  murdered  love — her  love,  a  dear  wronged  ghost, 
Facing  him,  beauteous,  'mid  the  throngs  of  hell." 

Few  authors  or  artists  but  George  Eliot  could  have 
won  us  again  to  look  on  Don  Silva  except  with 
revulsion  or  disgust ;  and  it  is  characteristic  of  more 
than  all  ordinary  power  that  through  the  deep 
impressive  solemnity  of  the  closing  scene,  he,  the 
renegade  and  murderer,  almost  divides  our  interest 
and  sympathy  with  Fedalma  herself;  and  this  by  no 
condoning  of  his  guilt,  no  extenuation  of  the  depth 
of  his  fall,  for  these  are  here,  most  of  all,  kept  ever 
before  our  eyes.  But  the  better  and  nobler  elements 
of  his  nature,  throughout  all  his  degradation  revealed 


74  The  EtJiics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

to  us  as  never  wholly  overborne,  as  ever  struggling 
to  assert  themselves,  have  begun  to  prevail,  and  to  put 
down  from  supremacy  that  meaner  self  which  has  led 
him  into  such  abysses  of  faithlessness,  apostasy,  and 
sin.  The  wild  despair  of  remorse  is  giving  way  to  the 
self-renunciation  of  repentance  ;  the  storm  of  con- 
flicting passions  and  emotions  is  stilled  ;  the  fearful 
battle  between  good  and  evil  through  which  he  has 
passed  has  left  him  exhausted  of  every  hope  and  aim 
save  to  die,  repentant  and  absolved,  for  the  country 
and  faith  he  had  abjured.  The  self-assertion,  too,  of 
love  is  gone,  and  only  its  deep  purity  and  tenderness 
remain.  Without  murmur  or  remonstrance,  he 
acquiesces  in  the  doom  of  hopeless  separation ; 
accepting  all  that  remains  possible  to  him  of  that 
"high  allegiance  higher  than  our  love,"  which  is 
thenceforth  the  only  bond  of  union  between  these 
two.  In  that  last  sad  interview  with  her  for  whom 
he  had  so  fearfully  sinned,  and  so  all  but  utterly 
fallen,  we  can  regard  Don  Silva  with  a  fuller  and 
truer  sympathy  than  we  dare  accord  to  him  in  all  the 
height  of  his  greatness,  and  all  the  wealth,  beauty, 
and  joy  of  his  yet  unshadowed  love. 

In  the  next  of  this  series  of  great  works,  and  the 
one  which  to  many  of  her  readers  is  and  will  remain 
the  most  fascinating — "Middlemarch" — George  Eliot 
has  stretched  a  broader  and  more  crowded  canvas,  on 
which,  however,  every  figure,  to  the  least  important 
that  appears,  is — not  sketched  or  outlined,  but — filled 
in  with  an  intense  and  life-like  vividness  and  precision 


Middlemarch  75 

that  makes  each  stand  out  as  if  it  stood  there  alone. 
Quote  but  a  few  words  from  any  one  of  the  speakers, 
and  we  know  in  a  moment  who  that  speaker  is.  And 
each  is  the  type  or  representative  of  a  class  ;  we  have 
no  monsters  or  unnatural  creations  among  them.  To 
a  certain  extent  all  are  idealized  for  good  or  for  evil, — 
it  cannot  be  otherwise  in  fiction  without  its  ceasing  to 
be  fiction  ;  but  the  essential  elements  of  character  and 
life  in  all  are  not  peculiar  to  them,  but  broad  and 
universal  as  our  humanity  itself.  Dorothea  and  her 
sister,  Mr.  Brooke  and  Sir  James  Chettam,  Rosamond 
Vincy  and  her  brother,  Mr.  Vincy  and  his  wife,  Casau- 
bon  and  Lydgate,  Farebrother  and  Ladislaw,  Mary 
Garth  and  her  parents,  Bulstrode  and  Raffles,  even 
Drs.  Sprague  and  Minchin,  old  Featherstone  and 
his  kindred — all  are  but  representative  men  and 
women,  with  whose  prototypes  every  reader,  if  gifted 
with  the  subtle  power  of  penetration  and  analysis  of 
George  Eliot,  might  claim  personal  acquaintance. 

This  richly-crowded  canvas  presents  to  us  such 
variety  of  illustration  of  the  two  great  antagonistic 
principles  of  human  life — self-pleasing  and  self-abne- 
gation, love  of  pleasure  and  the  love  of  God  more  or 
less  absolute  and  consummate — that  it  is  no  easy 
task  to  select  from  among  them.  But  two  figures 
stand  out  before  us,  each  portrayed  with  such  finished 
yet  unlabored  art — living,  moving,  talking  before 
us — contrasted  with  such  exquisite  yet  unobtrusive 
delicacy,  and  so  subtilely  illustrating  the  two  great 
phases  of  human  inspiration  and  life — that  which 


j6  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot 's  Works 

centres  in  self,  and  that  which  yearns  and  seeks  to 
lose  itself  in  the  infinite  of  truth,  purity,  and  love — 
that  instinctively  and  irresistibly  the  mind  fixes  upon 
them.  These  are  Dorothea  and  Rosamond  Vincy. 
To  not  a  few  of  George  Eliot's  readers,  we  believe 
that  Dorothea  is  and  will  always  be  a  fairer  and  more 
attractive  form  than  Dinah  Morris  or  Romola  di 
Bardi,  Fedalma  or  Mirah  Cohen.  In  her  sweet  young 
enthusiasm,  often  unguided  or  misguided  by  its  very 
intensity,  but  always  struggling  and  tending  on  toward 
the  highest  good;  in  the  touching  maidenly  simplicity 
with  which  she  at  once  identifies  and  accepts  Mr. 
Casaubon  as  her  guide  and  support  toward  a  higher, 
less  self-contained  and  self-pleasing,  more  inclusive 
and  all-embracing  life;  in  the  yearning  pain  with  which 
the  first  dread  of  possible  disappointment  dawns  and 
darkens  over  her,  and  the  meek  humility  of  her  re- 
pentance on  the  one  faint  betrayal — wrung  from  her 
by  momentary  anguish — of  that  disappointment;  in 
the  tender  wifely  patience,  reticence,  forbearance, 
with  which  she  hides  from  all,  the  heart-gnawings  of 
shattered  and  expiring  hope ;  the  sense  which  she  can 
no  longer  veil  from  her  own  deepest  consciousness 
that  in  Mr.  Casaubon  there  is  no  help  or  stay  for 
her  and  the  unwearied  though  too  soon  unhoping 
earnestness  with  which  she  labors  to  establish  true 
relations  between  herself  and  her  uncongenial  mate  ; 
in  the  patient  yet  crushing  anguish  of  that  long 
night's  heart-struggle  which  precedes  the  close — a 
struggle  not  against  her  own  higher  self,  but  whether 


Middlemarch  jj 

she  dare  bind  down  that  higher  self  to  a  lifelong, 
narrow,  worthless  task,  and  the  aching  consciousness 
of  what — almost  against  conscience  and  right — her 
answer  must  be  ; — there  is  an  inexpressible  charm 
and  loveliness  in  all  this  which  no  one,  not  utterly 
dead  to  all  that  is  fairest  and  best  in  womanhood, 
can  fail  to  recognize. 

Not  less  wonderfully  depicted  is  the  guileless 
frankness  which,  from  first  to  last,  characterizes  her 
whole  relations  to  Ladislaw.  If  there  is  one  flaw  in 
this  noble  work,  it  is  that  Ladislaw  on  first  examina- 
tion is  scarcely  equal  to  this  exquisite  creation.  Yet 
it  might  have  been  nearly  as  difficult  even  for  George 
Eliot  to  satisfy  our  instinctive  cravings  in  this  par- 
ticular with  regard  to  Dorothea,  as  in  respect  to 
Romola  or  Fedalma.  And  when  we  study  her  por- 
trait of  Ladislaw  more  carefully,  there  is  a  latent 
beauty  and  nobleness  about  him ;  an  innate  and 
intense  reverence  for  the  highest  and  purest,  and  an 
unvarying  aim  and  struggle  toward  it ;  an  utter  scorn 
and  loathing  of  everything  mean  and  base, — that 
almost  makes  us  cancel  the  word  flaw.  We  recognize 
this  nobleness  of  nature  almost  on  his  first  appear- 
ance, in  the  deep  reverence  with  which  he  regards 
Dorothea,  the  fulness  with  which  he  penetrates  the 
guileless  candor  of  the  relation  she  assumes  to  him, 
the  entireness  of  his  trust  in  the  spotless  purity  of 
her  whole  nature.  And  in  him  we  have  presented 
all  those  essential  and  fundamental  elements  of  nature 
which  give  assurance  that,  Dorothea  by  his  side,  he 


78  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

shall  be  no  unfitting  helpmeet  to  her,  no  drag  or 
hindrance  on  her  higher  life;  that  he  shall  rise  to 
the  elevation  and  purity  of  her  self-consecration, 
and  shall  stand  by  her  side  sustaining,  guiding,  ex- 
panding that  life  of  ever-growing  fulness  and  human 
helpfulness  to  which  each  is  dedicated. 

But  the  essence  of  all  this  moral  and  spiritual  love- 
liness is  its  unconsciousness.  Self  has  no  place  in  it. 
From  the  first  the  one  absorbing  life  aim  and  action 
is  toward  others — toward  aiding  the  toils,  advancing 
the  well-being,  relieving  the  suffering,  elevating  the 
life,  of  all  around  her.  And  this  in  no  spirit  of 
self-satisfied  and  vainglorious  self-estimation,  but  in 
that  utter  unconsciousness  which  is  characteristic 
of  her  whole  being.  Of  the  social  reformer,  the 
purposed  philanthropist,  the  benefactor  of  the  poor, 
the  wretched,  and  the  fallen,  there  is  no  trace  in 
Dorothea  Brooke.  Grant  that,  as  she  is  first  pre- 
sented to  us,  that  aim  is  for  the  time  apparently 
concentrated  in  improved  cottage  accommodation  for 
the  poor ;  even  here  there  is  no  thought  of  displaying 
the  skill  of  the  design  and  contriver:  there  is  thought 
alone  of  the  object  she  seeks — ameliorating  the 
condition  of  those  she  yearns  to  benefit. 

In  her  very  first  interview  with  Casaubon,  there  is 
something  inexpressibly  touching  in  the  humility  of 
childlike  trust  with  which  she  accepts  him  and  his 
"  great  mind,"  and  the  innocent  purity  with  which 
she  allows  herself  to  indulge  the  vision  of  a  life 
passed  by  his  side;  a  life  which  he,  by  his  influence 


MiddlemarcJi  79 

and  guidance,  is  to  make  more  full  and  free,  and 
delivered  from  those  conventionalities  of  custom  and 
fashion  which  restrict  it.  At  last  his  cold,  formal 
proposal  of  marriage  is  made.  She  sees  nothing  of 
its  true  character — that  he  is  but  seeking,  not  an  help- 
meet for  life  and  soul  in  all  their  higher  require- 
ments, but  simply  and  solely  a  kind  of  superior, 
blindly  submissive  dependant  and  drudge.  In  the 
impossibility  of  marriage  presenting  itself  to  her 
purity  of  maiden  innocence  as  a  mere  establishment 
in  life,  or  in  any  of  those  meaner  aspects  in  which 
meaner  natures  regard  it,  she  sees  nothing  of  all  this 
— nothing  save  that  the  yearning  of  her  heart  is 
fulfilled,  and  that  henceforth  her  life  shall  pass  under 
a  high  guardianship,  sustained  by  a  holier  strength, 
animated  by  a  more  self-expansive  fulness,  guided 
toward  nobler  and  fuller  aims. 

Picturing  to  some  extent,  in  degree  as  we  are 
capable  of  entering  into  a  nature  like  hers,  the 
anguish  that  such  an  awakening  must  be  to  her,  it 
is  exquisitely  painful  to  follow  in  imagination  the 
slow  sure  process  of  her  awakening- to  what  this 
man,  who  "  has  no  good  red  blood  in  his  body,"  really 
is — a  cold,  shallow  pedant,  whose  entire  existence  is 
bound  up  in  researches,  with  regard  to  which  he  even 
shrinks  from  inquiry  as  to  whether  all  he  has  for 
years  been  vaguely  attempting  has  not  been  antici- 
pated, and  whose  intense  and  absorbing  egoism 
makes  the  remotest  hint  of  depreciation  pierce  like  a 
dagger.     The  first  faint  dawn  of  discovery  breaks 


8o  The  Etliics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

on  her  almost  immediately  on  their  arrival  at  Rome. 
Conscious  of  her  want  of  mere  aesthetic  culture — 
neglected  in  the  past  as  a  turning  aside  from  life's 
highest  aims — she  has  looked  forward  to  his  guidance 
and  support  for  the  supply  of  this  want  as  enlarging 
her  whole  being ;  broadening  and  deepening,  refining 
and  elevating  all  its  sympathies.  For  all  shadow  of 
aid  or  sympathy  here,  she  finds  herself  as  utterly 
alone  as  if  she  were  in  a  trackless  and  uninhabited 
desert.  Nay,  more :  he  who  sits  by  her  side  is  as 
cold  and  dead  to  all  sensations  or  emotions  that  art 
can  enkindle,  as  the  glorious  marbles  amid  which 
they  wander.  Soon  she  finds  herself  relegated  to 
the  society  and*fellowship  of  her  maid  ;  her  husband 
is  less  to  her,  is  incapable  of  being  other  than  less, 
amid  those  transcendent  treasures  of  architecture, 
painting,  and  sculpture,  than  a  hired  guide  or 
cicerone  would  be. 

Soon  follows  the  scene  where  her  timid  offer  of 
humble  service  is  thrown  back  with  all  the  irrita- 
tion of  that  absorbing  egoism  which  is  the  very 
essence  and  life-in-death  of  the  man.  For  the  first 
and  only  time,  a  faint  cry  of  conscious  irritation 
escapes  her,  followed  by  an  anguish  of  repentance 
so  deep,  so  meekly,  humbly  self-accusing,  it  reveals 
to  us  more  of  her  truest  and  innermost  life  than  pages 
of  elaborate  description  could  do.  A  single  sentence 
descriptive  of  her  mood  even  in  that  first  irritation 
brings  before  us  her  deepest  soul,  and  the  litter 
absence  of  self-isolation  and  self-insistence  there: — 


Middlemarch  8 1 

"However  just  her  indignation  might  be,  her  ideal 
was  not  to  claim  justice  but  to  give  tenderness." 

She  meets  Ladislaw;  and  he  more  than  hints  to 
her  that  the  dim,  vague  labors  and  accumulations 
of  years  which  have  constituted  her  husband's 
nearest  approach  to  life  have  been  labor  in  vain ; 
that  the  "great  mind"  has  been  toiling,  with  feeble, 
uncertain  steps,  in  a  path  which  has  already  been 
trodden  into  firmness  and  completeness ;  toiling  in 
wilful  and  obdurate  ignorance  that  other  and  abler 
natures  have  more  than  anticipated  all  he  has  been 
painfully  and  abortively  laboring  to  accomplish. 
Again  a  cry  bursts  from  the  wounded  heart,  seem- 
ingly of  anger  against  her  informant,  really  of  an- 
guish— anguish,  not  for  her  own  sinking  hopes,  but 
for  the  burden  of  disappointment  and  failure  which 
she  instinctively  perceives  must,  sooner  or  later, 
fall  on  the  husband  who  is  thus  throwing  away  life 
in  vain. 

So  it  goes  on,  through  all  the  ever-darkening 
problem  of  her  married,  yet  unmated,  life.  Efforts, 
always  more  earnest  on  the  part  of  her  yearning, 
unselfish  tenderness,  to  establish  true  relations 
between  them ;  to  find  in  him  something  of  that  sweet 
support,  that  expansive  and  elevating  force,  silently 
entering  into  her  own  innermost  life,  which  her  first 
childlike  trust  inspired ;  to  become  to  him,  even  if 
no  more  may  be,  that  to  which  her  childlike  humil- 
ity at  first  alone  aspired — eyes  to  his  weakness,  and 
strength  and  freedom  to  his  pen.     So  it  goes  on; 


82  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

ever-gnawing  pain  and  anguish,  as  all  her  yearning 
love  and  pity  is  thrown  back,  and  that  dulled  insen- 
sate heart  and  all-absorbing  egoism  can  find  only 
irritation  in  her  timid  attempts  at  sympathy,  only 
dread  of  detection  of  the  half-conscious  futility  of  all 
his  labors,  in  her  humble  proffers  of  even  mechani- 
cal aid.  Not  easily  can  even  the  most  fervid  and 
penetrative  imagination  conceive  what,  to  a  nature 
like  Dorothea's,  such  a  life  must  be,  with  its  never- 
ceasing,  ever-gathering  pain  ;  its  longing  tenderness 
not  even  actively  repelled,  but  simply  ignored  or 
misinterpreted;  its  humblest,  equally  with  its  high- 
est yearnings,  baffled  and  shattered  against  that 
triple  mail  of  shallowest  self-includedness.  And  all 
has  to  be  borne  in  silence  and  alone.  No  word,  no 
look,  no  sign,  betrays  to  other  eye  the  inward  an- 
guish, the  deepening  disappointment,  the  slow  dying 
away  of  hope.  Nay,  for  long,  on  indeed  to  the  bitter 
close,  failure  seems  to  her  to  be  almost  wholly  on 
her  own  side;  and  repentance  and  self-upbraiding 
leave  no  room  for  resentment. 

Ere  long — indeed,  very  soon — another,  and,  if  pos- 
sible, a  still  deeper  humiliation  comes  upon  her, — 
another,  and,  in  some  respects  a  keener  pang,  as 
showing  more  intensely  how  entirely  she  stands 
alone,  is  thrown  into  her  life, — in  her  husband's 
jealousy  of  Ladislaw.  Yet  jealousy  it  cannot  be 
called.  Of  any  emotion  so  comparatively  profound, 
any  passion  so  comparatively  elevated,  that  self- 
absorbed,  self-tormenting  nature  is  utterly  incapable. 


Middlemarch  83 

Jealousy,  in  some  degree,  presupposes  love  ;  love  not 
wholly  absorbed  in  self,  but  capable  to  some  extent 
of  going  forth  from  our  own  mean  and  sordid  self- 
inclusion  in  sympathetic  relation,  dependency,  and 
aid  towards  another  existence.  In  Mr.  Casaubon 
there  is  no  capability,  no  possibility  of  this.  What 
in  him  wears  the  aspect  of  jealousy  is  simply  and 
solely  self-love,  callous  irritation,  that  any  one  should 
— not  stand  above,  but — approach  himself  in  im- 
portance with  the  woman  he  has  purchased  as  a 
kind  of  superior  slave.  For  long  her  guileless  inno- 
cence and  purity,  her  utter  inability  to  conceive  such 
a  feeling,  leaves  her  only  in  doubt  and  perplexity 
before  it ;  long  after  it  has  first  betrayed  itself,  she 
reveals  this  incapability  in  the  fullest  extent,  and  in 
the  way  most  intensely  irritating  to  her  husband's 
self-love — byjier  simple-hearted  proposal  that  what- 
ever of  his  property  would  devolve  on  her  should 
be  shared  with  Ladislaw.  Then  it  is  that  Casaubon 
is  roused  to  inflict  on  her  the  last  long  and  bitter 
anguish;  to  lay  on  her  for  life — had  not  death  inter- 
vened— the  cold,  soul-benumbing,  life-contracting 
clutch  of  "the  Dead  Hand."  In  the  innocence  of 
her  entire  relations  with  Ladislaw,  not  the  faintest 
dawning  of  thought  connects  itself  with  him  in  her 
husband's  cold,  insistent  demand  on  her  blind  obedi- 
ence to  his  will.  She  thinks  alone  of  his  thus  bind- 
ing her  to  a  lifelong  task,  not  only  hard  and  ungenial, 
but  one  that  shall  absorb  and  fetter  all  her  energies, 
restrain  all  her  faculties,  impair  and  frustrate  all  her 


84  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot s  Works 

higher  and  broader  aims,  make  impossible  all  that 
better  and  purer  fulness  of  life  for  which  she  yearns. 
Then  follows  the  long  and  painful  struggle, — a 
struggle  so  agonizing  to  such  a  nature,  that  only 
one  nearly  akin  to  her  own  can  adequately  conceive 
or  picture  it.  For  it  is  a  struggle  not  primarily  to 
forego  any  certain  or  fancied  mere  personal  good. 
On  one  side  is  ranged  tenderest  pitifulness  over  her 
husband's  wasted  life  and  energies,  even  though  she 
knows  those  energies  have  been  wasted — that  life  has 
been  thrown  away — on  an  object  in  which  there  is  no 
gain  to  humanity,  no  advancement  of  human  well- 
being,  no  profit  even  to  himself,  save,  perchnace,  a 
barren  and  useless  notoriety  at  last;  an  object 
that  has  been  already  far  more  fully  and  ably 
achieved. 

On  the  other  stands  her  clear  Y\\\<\ovfc£m<g  conscience 
of  her  own  truest  and  highest  course, — the  course  to 
which  every  prompting  of  the  Divine  within  impels 
her, — that  she  shall  not  thus  isolate  herself  within 
this  narrowest  sphere,  shut  herself  out  from  all  social 
sympathies  and  social  outgoings,  and  sacrifice  to  the 
Dead  Hand  that  holds  her  in  its  cold  remorseless 
clutch  every  interest  that  may  be  intrusted  to  her. 
We  instinctively  shudder  at  the  result ;  but  we  never 
doubt  what  the  answer  will  be.  We  know  that  the 
tender,  womanly,  wifely  pitifulness,  the  causeless 
remorse,  will  be  the  nearest  and  most  urgent  con- 
science, and  will  prevail.  The  agonized  assent  is  to 
be  given  ;  but  it  falls  on  the  ear  of  the  dead. 


Middle  march  85 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  follow  Dorothea  minutely 
through  all  the  details  of  her  widowed  relations  to 
Mr.  Casaubon.  Enough  that  these  are  all  in  touching 
and  beautiful  harmony  with  everything  that  has  gone 
before.  No  resentment,  no  recalcitration  against  all 
the  ever-gathering  perplexity,  pain,  and  anguish  he 
has  caused  her — nothing  but  the  sweet  unfailing  piti- 
fulness,  the  uncalled-for  repentance,  almost  remorse, 
over  her  own  assumed  shortcomings  and  deficiencies 
— her  failures  to  be  to  him  what  in  those  first  days 
of  her  childlike  simplicity  and  innocence  she  had 
hoped  she  might  become.  Even  on  the  discovery 
of  the  worse  than  treachery,  of  the  mean  insulting 
malignity  with  which,  trusting  to  her  confiding  purity 
and  truthfulness,  he  had  sought  to  grasp  her  for  life  in 
his  "  Dead  Hand"  with  regard  to  Ladislaw,and  she 
only  escaped  the  irrevocable  bond  her  own  blindly- 
given  pledge  would  have  fixed  around  her  by  his 
death, — the  momentary  and  violent  shock  of  revul- 
sion from  her  dead  husband,  who  had  had  hidden 
thoughts  of  her,  perhaps  perverting  everything  she 
said  or  did,  terrified  her  as  if  it  had  been  a  sin. 

It  is  not  alone,  however,  toward  her  husband  that 
this  simple,  unconscious  self-devotion  and  self-abne- 
gation of  Dorothea  Brooke  displays  itself.  Toward 
every  one  with  whom  she  comes  in  contact,  it  steals 
out  unobtrusively  and  silently,  as  the  dew  from  heaven 
on  the  tender  grass,  to  each  and  all  according  to  the 
kind  and  nearness  of  that  relation.  Even  for  her 
"  pulpy"  uncle  she  has  no  supercilious  contempt — no 


86  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

sense  of  isolation  or  separation  ;  not  even  the  con- 
sciousness of  toleration  toward  him.  Toward  Celia, 
with  her  delicious  commonplace  of  rather  superficial 
yet  naive  worldly  wisdom,  her  half-conscious  selfish- 
ness, her  baby-worship,  and  her  inimitable  "staccato," 
she  is  more  than  tolerant.  She  looks  up  to  her  as  in 
many  respects  a  superior,  even  though  her  own  far 
higher  instincts  and  aims  of  life  cannot  accept  her  as 
an  aid  and  guidance  toward  the  realization  of  these. 
Even  at  old  Featherstone's  funeral,  her  one  emotion 
is  of  pitiful  sorrow  over  that  loveless  mockery  of  all 
human  pity  and  love  ;  and  for  the  "  Frog-faced  "  there 
is  no  feeling  but  sympathetic  compassion  for  his 
apparent  loneliness  amongst  strangers,  who  all  stand 
aloof  and  look  askance  on  him.  Into  all  Lydgate's 
plans,  into  the  whole  question  of  the  hospital  and  all 
he  hopes  to  achieve  through  means  of  it,  she  throws 
herself  with  swift  intelligence,  with  active,  eager  sym- 
pathy, as  a  probable  instrumentality  by  which  at  least 
one  phase  of  suffering  may  be  redressed  or  allayed. 
And  in  the  hour  of  his  deep  humiliation,  when  all 
others  have  fallen  away  from  his  side,  when  the  wife 
of  his  bosom  forsakes  him  in  callous  and  heartless 
resentment  of  what  was  done  for  her  sake  alone  ; 
when  he  stands  out  the  mark  of  scorn  and  obloquy 
for  all  save  Farebrother,  and  scans  and  all  but  loathes 
himself — she,  with  her  artless  trust  in  the  best  of 
humanity,  in  the  strength  of  her  instinctive  recogni- 
tion of  the  merest  glimmering  of  whatever  is  true  and 
right  and  high  in  others,  comes  to  his  side, yields  him 


Middlemarch  Sy 

at  once  her  fullest  confidence,  gives  him  with  frank 
simplicity  her  aid,  and  enables  him,  so  far  as  deter- 
mined prejudice  and  uncharity  will  allow,  to  right 
himself  before  others. 

Reference  has  already  been  made  to  her  whole 
relations,  from  first  to  last,  with  Ladislaw.  It  is  not 
easy  to  conceive  anything  more  touchingly  beautiful 
than  these,  more  perfectly  in  harmony  with  her  whole 
nature.  Of  anything  approaching  either  coquetry  or 
prudery  she  is  incapable.  The  utter  absence  of  all 
self-consciousness,  whether  of  external  beauty  or 
inward  loveliness ;  the  ethereal  purity,  the  childlike 
trustfulness,  the 'instinctive  recognition  of  all  that  is 
true  and  earnest  and  high  in  Ladislaw,  through  all 
the  surface  appearance  of  indecision,  of  vague  uncer- 
tain aim  and  purpose  and  limited  object  in  life  ;  no 
thought  of  what  is  ordinarily  called  love  toward  him, 
of  love  on  his  part  toward  her — ever  dawns  upon  her 
guileless  innocence.  Through  all  her  yearning  to  do 
justice  to  him  as  regards  the  property  of  her  dead 
husband,  which  she  looks  upon  as  fairly  and  justly  his, 
or  at  least  to  be  shared  with  him,  there  arises  before 
her  the  determination  of  her  dead  husband  that  it 
should  not  be  so ;  and  her  sweet  regretful  pitifulness 
over  that  meagre  wasted  life  prevails.  Anon,  when 
at  last  through  the  will  she  is  made  aware  of  the 
crowning  act  of  that  concentrated  callousness  of  heart 
and  soul,  and  of  the  true  nature  of  the  benumbing 
grasp  it  had  sought  to  lay  on  her  for  life,  and  had  so 
far  succeeded  in  doing,  then  for  the  first  time  her 


88  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

"  tremulous  "  maiden  purity  and  simplicity  awakens, 
and  for  the  first  time  it  enters  her  mind  that  Ladislaw 
could,  under  any  circumstances,  become  her  lover  ; 
that  another  had  thought  of  them  in  that  light,  and 
that  he  himself  had  been  conscious  of  such  a  possi- 
bility arising.  The  later  scenes  between  them  are 
characterized  by  a  quiet  beauty,  a  suppressed  power 
and  pathos,  compared  to  which  most  other  love-scenes 
in  fiction  appear  dull  and  coarse.  The  tremulous 
yearning  of  her  love,  as  it  awakens  more  and  more  to 
distinct  consciousness  within  ;  the  new-born  shyness 
blent  with  the  old,  trustful,  frank  simplicity — bring 
before  us  a  picture  of  love,  in  its  purest  and  most 
beautiful  aspect,  such  as  cannot  easily  be  paralleled 
in  fiction. 

Toward  her  late  husband's  parishioners  there  is 
the  same  wise  instinctive  insight  as  to  their  true  needs, 
the  same  thoughtful  and  provident  consideration 
that  characterizes  her  in  every  relation  into  which 
she  is  brought.  If  she  at  once  objects,  on  their  be- 
hoof, to  Mr.  Tyke's  so-called  "  apostolic  "  preaching, 
it  is  that  she  means  by  that,  sermons  about  "  imputed 
righteousness  and  the  prophecies  in  the  Apocalypse. 
I  have  always  been  thinking  of  the  different  ways  in 
which  Christianity  is  taught,  and  whenever  I  find  one 
way  that  makes  it  a  wider  blessing  than  any  other,  I 
cling  to  that  as  the  truest — I  mean  that  which  takes 
in  the  most  good  of  all  kinds,  and  brings  in  the  most 
people  as  sharers  in  it."  And  in  her  final  selection 
of  Mr.  Farebrother,  she  is  guided  not  alone  by  her 


Middle  march  89 

sense  of  his  general  and  essential  fitness  for  the  work 
assigned  to  him,  but  also  in  some  degree  by  her 
desire  to  make  whist-playing  for  money,  and  the 
comparatively  inferior  society  into  which  it  neces- 
sarily draws  him,  no  longer  a  need  of  his  outer 
life. 

Of  all  the  less  prominent  relations  into  which 
Dorothea  Brooke  is  brought,  there  is  not  one  more 
touchingly  tender,  or  in  which  her  whole  nature  is 
drawn  more  beautifully  out,  than  that  to  Rose  Vincy. 
Between  these  two,  at  least  on  the  side  of  the  hard 
unpenetrable  incarnation  of  self-inclusion  and  self- 
pleasing,  any  approach  to  harmony  or  sympathy  is 
impossible.  There  is  not  even  any  true  ground  of 
womanhood  on  which  Rosamond  can  meet  Doro- 
thea ;  for  she  is  nearly  as  far  removed  from  woman- 
hood as  Tito  Melema  is  from  manliness  or  manhood. 
Yet  even  here  the  tender  pitifulness  of  Dorothea 
overpasses  a  barrier  that  to  any  other  would  be 
impassable.  In  her  sweet,  instinctive,  universal  sym- 
pathy for  human  sorrow  and  pain,  she  finds  a 
common  ground  of  union  ;  and  in  no  fancied  sense 
of  superiority — solely  from  the  sense  of  common 
human  need — she  strives  to  console,  to  elevate,  to 
lead  back  to  hope  and  trust,  with  a  gentle  yet  stead- 
fast simplicity  all  her  own. 

Such,  as  portrayed  by  unquestionably  the  greatest 
fietionist  of  the  time — is  it  too  much  to  say,  the 
greatest  genius  of  our  English  nineteenth  century  ? 
— is  the  nineteenth  century  St.  Theresa. 


90  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

The  question  may  be  raised  by  some  of  George 
Eliot's  readers  whether  it  constitutes  the  best  and 
completest  ethical  teaching  that  fiction  can  attain,  to 
bring  before  its  readers  such  high  ideals  of  the  possi- 
bilities of  humanity — of  the  aim  and  purpose  of  life 
toward  which  it  should  ever  aspire.  Were  the  author's 
canvas  occupied  with  such  portraitures  alone — with 
Romolas  and  Fedalmas,  Dinah  Morrises  and  Doro- 
thea Brookes,  Daniel  Derondas  and  Adam  Bedes, 
even  Mr.  Tryans  and  Mr.  Gilfils — the  question  might 
call  for  full  discussion,  and  a  contrast  might  be  unfa- 
vorably drawn  between  the  author  and  him  whose 
emphatic  praise  it  is  that  he  "  holds  the  mirror  up 
to  nature."  But  the  great  artist  for  all  time  brings 
before  us  not  only  an  Iago  and  an  Edmund,  an 
Angelo  and  an  Iachimo,  a  Regan  and  a  Goneril,  but 
a  Miranda  and  an  Imogen,  an  Isabella  and  a  Viola, 
a  Cordelia  and  a  Desdemona,  with  every  conceivable 
intermediate  shade  of  human  character  and  life  ;  and 
in  George  Eliot  we  have  the  same  clearly  defined  con- 
trasts and  endless  variety.  That  a  Becky  Sharp  and 
a  Beatrix  Castlewood  are  drawn  with  the  consummate 
skill  and  force  of  the  most  perfect  artist  in  his  own 
special  sphere  our  age  has  produced,  few  will  be 
disposed  to  deny  ;  and  that  they  have  momentous 
lessons  to  teach  us  all, — that  they  may  by  sheer 
antagonism  rouse  some  from  dreams  of  selfish  vanity 
and  corruption,  and  awaken  within  some  germ  of 
better  and  purer  elements  of  life, — will  scarcely  be 
disputed.     But  it  is  not  from  these,  or  such  as  these, 


Middleinar cli  9 1 

that  the  highest  and  noblest,  the  purest  and  most  pen- 
etrative, the  most  extended  and  enduring  teaching 
and  elevation  of  the  world  has  come.  That  has  come 
emphatically  from  Him  whose  self-chosen  name, "  the 
Son  of  Man,"  designates  him  the  ideal  of  humanity 
on  earth;  Him  who  is  at  once  the  "  Lamb  of  God  " 
and  the  "  Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah,"  the  "Good 
Shepherd,"  and  the  stern  and  fearless  but  ever- 
righteous  Judge — the  concentration  of  all  tender  and 
holy  love,  and  of  divinest  scorn  of,  and  revulsion  from, 
everything  mean  and  false  in  humanity  ;  Him  who  for 
the  repentant  sinner  has  no  harsher  word  of  rebuke 
than  "Go  and  sin  no  more,"  and  who  over  the  self- 
righteous,  self-wrapt,  all-despising  Pharisees  thun- 
dered back,  to  His  own  ultimate  destruction,  His  terri- 
ble "  Woe  unto  you,  hypocrites^  He,  too,  stands  out, 
not  isolated  or  severed,  but  prominent,  amid  every 
conceivable  phase  and  gradation  of  human  character, 
from  a  John  to  a  Judas ;  touches  each  and  all  at  some 
point  of  living  contact;  meets  them  with  tender  sym- 
pathy, with  gentle  patience,  and  pitying  love,  over 
their  weaknesses  and  falls.  Can  the  true  artist  err  in 
aiming,  according  to  his  nature  or  to  the  purity  and 
elevation  of  his  genius,  to  approach  in  his  portraitures 
such  ideals  as  this  great  typical  exemplar  of  our 
humanity,  whose  influence  has  for  eighteen  centuries 
been  stealing  down  into  the  hearts  and  souls  of  men 
to  elevate  and  refine;  and  who  is  now,  and  who  is 
more  and  more  becoming,  the  paramount  factor  in 
individual    character,    and    in    social    and    political 


92  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

relations  ?  Or  can  such  ideals,  presented  before  us, 
fail  to  arouse  in  some  degree  the  better  elements  of 
our  humanity,  and  to  lead  us  to  strive  toward  the 
realization  of  these  ? 

In  wonderfully  drawn  and  finished  yet  never  ob- 
truded contrast  to  this  beautiful  creation  comes  before 
us  Rosamond  Vincy.  Outwardly  even  more  charac- 
terized by  every  personal  charm,  save  that  one  living 
and  crowning  charm  which  outshines  from  the  soul 
within  ;  to  the  eye,  therefore — such  eyes  as  can 
penetrate  no  deeper  than  the  surface — prettier,  more 
graceful,  more  accomplished  and  fascinating,  than 
Dorothea  Brooke; — it  is  difficult  to  conceive  a  more 
utterly  unlovable  example  of  womanhood,  whether  as 
maiden  or  wife.  Hard  and  callous  of  heart  and  dead 
of  soul,  incapable  of  one  thought  or  emotion  that 
rises  above  or  extends  beyond  self,  insistent  on  her 
own  petty  claims  and  ambitions  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
others,  ever  aiming  to  achieve  these,  now  by  dogged 
sullen  persistence,  now  by  mean  concealments  and 
frauds,  no  more  repellent  portraiture  of  womanhood 
has  ever  been  placed  before  us.  The  fundamental 
character  of  her  entire  home  relations  is,  on  her 
first  appearance,  drawn  by  a  single  delicate  touch — 
her  objecting  to  her  brother's  red  herring,  or  rather 
to  its  presence  after  she  enters  the  room,  because  its 
odor  jars  on  her  sense  of  pseudo-refinement.  In  her 
relation  to  her  husband  there  is  not  from  first  to  last 
one  shadow  of  anything  that  can  be  called  love, 
no  approach  to  sympathy  or  harmony  of  life.     She 


Middle  march  93 

looks  on  him  solely  as  a  means  for  removing  herself 
to  what  she  considers  a  higher  social  circle,  securing 
to  her  greater  ease,  freedom,  and  luxury  of  daily  life, 
and  ultimately  withdrawing  her  to  a  wider  sphere  of 
petty  and  selfish  enjoyment.  Seeking  these  ends, 
she  resorts  to  every  mean  device  of  deceit  and  con- 
cealment. Utterly  callous  and  impenetrable  to  his 
feelings,  to  every  manlier  instinct  within  him,  as 
she  is  utterly  insensible  of,  and  indeed  incapable  of, 
entering  into  his  higher  and  wider  professional  aims, 
she  not  only  ignores  these,  but  in  her  dull  and  hard  in- 
aensibility  runs  counter  to,  and  tramples  on  them  all. 

Even  toward  Mary  Garth  there  is  nothing  ap- 
proaching true  frendship  or  affection ;  no  power  of 
recognizing  her  honesty,  unselfishness,  and  earnest- 
ness of  nature.  She  is  nothing  to  her  but  a  tool 
and  confidante,  the  recipient  of  her  own  petty  hopes 
and  desires,  worries  and  cares. 

All  Dorothea's  gentle,  unobtrusive  attempts  to  \  ris^ 
soothe,  to  win  her  back  to  truer  and  better  relations 
with  her  husband,  and  to  awaken  to  active  life  and 
exercise  the  true  womanhood,  which  she  in  her  sweet 
instinct  believes  to  be  inherent  in  all  her  sex,  are 
met  by  hard  indifference  or  dull  resistance.  And 
in  the  one  act  of  apparent  friendliness  or  rather 
explanation  toward  Dorothea,  she  is  actuated  far  less 
by  sympathy  or  desire  to  clear  away  what  has  come 
between  her  and  Ladislaw,  than  by  sullen  resentment 
against  the  latter  for  his  rejection  of  her  unseemly 
and  unwifely  advances  to  him. 


94  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

In  the  position  she  at  last  takes  up  toward  Ladis- 
law,  there  is  no  approach  to  anything  in  the  very 
least  resembling  love — even  illicit  and  overmastering 
passion.  Of  that  her  very  nature  is  incapable.  She  is 
influenced  solely  by  resentment  against  her  husband, 
and  his  failure  to  fulfil  her  vain  and  self-absorbed 
dreams ;  by  the  hope  that  he  will  remove  her  to  a 
sphere  which  will  give  wider  scope  to  her  heartless 
selfishness,  and  take  her  away  from  the  social  disap- 
pointments and  humiliations  into  which  that  selfish- 
ness has  mainly  plunged  her.  In  every  relation  of 
life,  near  or  far,  important  or  trivial,  amid  all  envi- 
ronments, under  all  impulsion  toward  anything  purer 
and  better,  Rosamond  Vincy  is  ever  the  same ;  as 
consistent  and  unvarying  in  her  hard  unwomanliness 
and  impenetrable,  insistent  self-seeking  as  is  Dorothea 
in  every  opposite  characteristic.  And  even  while  the 
picture  in  one  way  fascinates  the  reader,  it  is  the 
fascination  of  ever-increasing  contempt  and  loathing 
where  the  extremest  charity  can  hardly  even  pity  : 
and  from  it  we  ever  turn  to  that  of  St.  Theresa  with  the 
more  intense  refreshment  alike  of  mind  and  heart, 
and  the  deeper  sense  of  its  elevating  and  refining 
influence. 

Among  the  many  clearly  defined  and  vividly 
drawn  portraits  in  this  great  work,  it  would  be  easy, 
did  space  permit,  to  select  others  well  worthy  of 
detailed  examination,  and  illustrative  of  the  salient 
aim  and  tendency  of  all  George  Eliot's  works.  The 
homely  yet  beautiful  family  groups  of  the  Garths, 


Middlcmarch  95 

Celia  and  Sir  James  Chettam,  the  Bulstrodes,*  even 
the  wretched  old  Featherstone,  and  the  crowd  of  vul- 
tures "  waiting  for  death  around  him,"  all  more  or  less 
illustrate  the  fundamental  principle  of  the  highest 
ethics — that  self-abnegation  is  life,  elevation,  purity, 
uplifting  our  humanity  toward  the  Divine  :  that  self- 
seeking  and  self-isolation  tend  surely  toward  moral 
and  spiritual  death.  Two,  however,  stand  out  so 
delicately  yet  clearly  defined  and  contrasting,  that 
they  claim  brief  consideration  before  passing  from 
this  great  work — Lydgate  and  Farebrother. 

The  whole  character  and  career  of  Lydgate  are 
brought  before  us  with  the  skill  of  the  consummate 
artist.  At  first  he  appears  as  a  man  of  massive  and 
energetic  proportions,  of  high  professional  impulses 
and  aims,  resolute  to  carry  these  through  against  all 
difficulty  and  amid  all  indifference  and  opposition, 
and  apparently  seeking  through  these  aims  the  gen- 
eral good  of  humanity — the  alleviation  of  suffering, 
and  the  arrestment,  it  may  be,  of  death.  But  even 
then  there  are  signs  of  inherent  weakness,  and  all  but 
certain  decline  and  fall.     There  are  indications  of 

*  In  connection  with  Bulstrode  occurs  one  of  those  delicate  indi- 
cations of  character,  condensed  into  a  few  words,  which  others  would 
expand  into  pages,  peculiar  to  George  Eliot.  It  occurs  in  the  depth 
of  his  humiliation  ;  when  his  wife,  hitherto  comparatively  character- 
less, in  full  token  of  her  acceptance  of  their  fallen  lot,  "  takes  off  all  her 
ornaments,  and  puts  on  a  plain  gown,  and  instead  of  wearing  her 
much-adorned  cap  and  large  bows  of  hair,  brushes  down  her  hair, 
and  puts  on  a  plain  bonnet-cap,  which  makes  her  look  like  an  early 
Methodist." 


96  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

arrogant  self-sufficiency  and  supercilious  contempt  for 
others;  of  undue  deference  for  Bulstrode,  not  from 
respect  or  esteem,  but  as  a  tool  to  further  his  views; 
and  a  tendency  to  treat  patients  not  as  human  beings 
but  as  cases — objects  to  experiment  on,  and  verify 
hypotheses  regarding  pathology  and  disease, all  which 
betray  a  nature  not  attuned  to  the  highest  and  noblest 
pitch,  and  that  cannot  be  expected  to  stand  in  the 
hour  of  trial.  His  first  direct  lapse  is  when,  against 
his  secret  conviction,  he  supports  Tyke  as  hospital 
chaplain  in  opposition  to  Farebrother ;  but  mainly 
in  mere  defiance  and  resentment  of  the  general 
style  of  his  reception  at  the  Board  meeting,  and  the 
opposition  he  encounters  there.  Anon  comes  his 
marriage  to  Rosamond  Vincy, — a  marriage  prompted 
by  no  true  affection,  but  solely  by  the  fascination  of 
her  prettiness,  her  external  grace  and  accomplish- 
ments. Led  on  mainly  by  his  own  taste  for  luxury 
and  external  show,  he  plunges  into  extravagances  of 
every  kind.  Debt  inevitably  follows,  crippling  his 
resources,  cramping  his  energies,  fettering  him  as 
regards  all  his  higher  professional  aims  and  efforts. 
To  his  wife  he  looks  in  vain  for  sympathy  or  aid. 
She  only  aggravates  the  difficulties  and  harassments 
of  his  life  by  her  callous  selfishness,  her  dull  obdurate 
insistance  on  all  her  own  claims,  her  mean  deceits 
and  concealments.  Embarrassments  of  every  kind 
thicken  around  him  ;  and  at  last  in  the  all  but  uni- 
versal estimation  of  his  fellows,  and  nearly  in  his  own, 
in  the  hope  of  temporary  relief  he  becomes  accessory 


Middlemarch  97 

to  murder.  His  end  is  as  sad  a  one  for  his  character, 
and  in  his  circumstances,  as  can  well  be  conceived : 
falling  from  all  his  high  if  somewhat  arrogant  pro- 
fessional aims,  his  hopes  of  elevating  the  general 
practitioner,  and  of  raising  medicine  from  an  art  to  a 
science,  into  the  fashionable  London  lady's  doctor. 

Though  Mr.  Farebrother  occupies  a  somewhat  less 
prominent  place  in  the  narrative,  he  is  delineated 
with  not  less  consummate  skill.  He  comes  before  us 
at  first  a  man  of  genial  kindly  sympathies,  frankly 
alive  to,  and  frankly  acknowledging,  his  own  de- 
ficiencies. There  is  an  utter  absence  of  pretence 
and  affectation  about  him,  a  graceful  and  engaging 
simplicity  and  frankness  of  whole  nature,  that  can 
hardly  fail  to  win  the  heart.  All  his  home  rela- 
tions— toward  mother  and  sisters — are  singularly 
touching.  Feeling  all  his  defects  as  a  clergyman,  half 
laughing,  half  apologetic  over  his  devotion  to  his 
favorite  Coleoptera,and  admitting  that  which  is  so  far 
a  necessity  to  him,  not  of  choice,  but  of  actual  external 
need  in  his  narrow  circumstances — admitting,  too, 
the  comparatively  inferior  and  uncongenial  society 
into  which  he  is  drawn — the  full  revelation  of  his 
nobler  and  higher  nature  begins.  His  true  and  deep 
appreciation  of  Mary  Garth,  and  tender,  devoted,  and 
unselfish  love  for  her,  more  clearly  reveal  his  innate 
manliness,  self-denial,  and  simplicity  of  character. 
This  revelation  is  still  further  unfolded  before  us  in 
his  entire  relations  with  Fred  Vincy.  That  firm  per- 
sistent interview  in  the  billiard-room,  is  actuated  by 


98  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

the  one  absorbing  and  self-abnegating  desire  that  he 
may  still  be  saved  from  the  moral  and  spiritual  decay 
impending  over  him  :  and  when,  in  answer  to  Fred's 
appeal  for  his  intercession,  we  discover  the  blighting 
of  his  own  hopes,  the  shattering  of  his  love,  the  tender 
heart  stricken  to  the  core  should  Fred  prove,  as  he 
suspects,  his  successful  rival,  we  discern  in  him  a 
nature  of  the  finest  capabilities,  and  surely  tending 
on  and  up  toward  the  noblest  ends ;  and  we  part 
from  him  as  from  a  dear  and  valued  friend,  whose 
society  has  cheered  and  elevated  us,  whose  pure 
simplicity  of  nature  has  refuted  our  vain  pretensions, 
and  whose  memory  clings  to  us  as  a  fragrance  and 
refreshment. 

There  now  only  remains  the  last  yet  published,  and 
in  the  estimation  of  many,  the  greatest,  of  George 
Eliot's  works — "  Daniel  Deronda."  In  it  the  author 
takes  up — not  a  new  scope,  but  extends  one  that  has 
all  along  been  present,  and  that  indeed  was  inevitably 
associated  with  her  great  ethical  principle, — the  bring- 
ing of  that  principle  definitely  and  directly  to  bear 
upon  not  only  every  domestic  but  every  social  and 
political  relation  of  human  life.  This  tendency  may 
be  briefly  expressed  in  the  old  and  profound  words : 
"  No  man  liveth  to  himself;  no  man  dieth  to  him- 
self." As  we  aim  toward  the  true  and  good  and 
pure,  or  surrender  ourselves  the  slaves  of  self  and 
sense,  we  live  or  die  to  God  or  to  the  devil. 

Before,  however,  proceeding  to  detailed  examina- 
tion of  this  remarkable  work,  it  seems  necessary  to 


Daniel  Deronda  99 

draw  attention  to  one  objection  which  has  been  urged 
against  it — the  prominent  introduction  of  the  Jewish 
element  into  its  scheme.  Such  objection  could 
scarcely  have  been  put  forward  by  any  one  who  con- 
siders what  the  Jew  has  been  in  the  past — what  an 
enormous  factor  his  past  and  present  have  been  and 
are,  in  the  development  and  progress  of  our  highest 
civilization.  Historically,  we  first  meet  him  coming 
forth  from  the  Arabian  desert,  a  rude  unlettered 
herdsman,  in  intelligence,  cultivation,.and  morality  far 
below  the  tribes  among  whom  he  is  thrown.  A  terrible 
weapon  arms  him — a  theism  stern,  hard,  and  pitiless, 
beyond,  perhaps,  all  the  world  has  ever  seen.  To  the 
bravest  and  best  of  his  race — a  Moses  and  a  Joshua, 
a  Deborah  and  a  Jephtha — this  presents  ruthless 
massacre,  the  vilest  treachery,  offering  up  a  sacrifice 
the  dearest  and  most  loved,  not  as  mere  permissible 
acts,  but  as  deeds  of  religious  homage  solemnly  en- 
joined by  his  Most  High.  This  theism  has  one  central 
thought  in  which  it  practically  stands  alone,  and 
which  it  was  the  aim  of  all  its  supposed  heads  and 
legislators  to  keep  inviolate  amid  all  surrounding 
antagonisms — the  intense  assertion  of  the  Divine 
unity.  "  Hear,  O  Israel !  the  Lord  thy  God  is  one 
Lord."  In  these  brief  words  lies  the  very  core  of 
Judaism.  So  long  as  he  holds  fast  by  this  central  truth, 
the  Jew  is  exhibited  to  us  as  practically  omnipotent. 
Seas  and  floods  divide  before  him  ;  hosts  numberless 
as  the  sands  are  scattered  at  his  appearance;  Cyclo- 
pean walls  fall  prone  at  his  trumpet-blast. 


I  oo  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot 's  Works 

And  this  thought  of  the  Divine  unity,  thus  intensely 
pervading  the  national  life,  upfolds  within  capacity 
of  indefinite  development.  No  long  time  in  the  life 
of  a  nation  elapses  ere  "  The  Lord  thy  God  is  a 
jealous  God,  visiting  the  iniquity  of  the  fathers  upon 
the  children,"  became  "  As  a  father  pitieth  his  chil- 
dren, so  the  Lord  pitieth  them  that  fear  Him."  "Can 
a  woman  forget  her  sucking  child,  that  she  should 
not  have  compassion  on  the  son  of  her  womb  ?  Yea, 
she  may  forget ;  yet  will  not  /  forget  thee." 

In  no  sense  of  the  word  was  the  Jew  a  creature  of 
imagination.  The  stern  and  hard  realities  of  his 
life  would  seem  to  have  crushed  out  every  trace  of 
the  aesthetic  element  within  him.  Yet  from  among 
these  people  arose  a  literature,  especially  a  hymnol- 
ogy,  which  has  never  been  approached  elsewhere ; 
and  it  arose  emphatically  and  distinctly  out  of  the 
great  central  and  animating  thought  of  the  Divine 
unity.  To  the  Psalms  so-called  of  David,  the  glori- 
ous outbursts  of  sacred  song  in  their  mythico-his- 
torical  books,  as  in  Isaiah*  and  some  of  the  minor 
prophets,  the  finest  of  the  Vedic  or  Orphic  hymns  or 
the  Homeric  ballads  are  cold  and  spiritless.  These 
address  themselves  to  scholars  alone,  or  chiefly  to  a 

*  Does  all  poetry  ancient  or  modern,  so-called  sacred  or  profane, 
contain  an  image  more  impressive  and  majestic  than  that  in  the 
"doom  of  Babylon,"  as  the  great  incarnation  of  pride  and  luxury 
descends  to  its  place  :  "  Hades  from  beneath  is  moved  for  thee  to 
meet  thee  at  thy  coming  :  it  stirreth  up  the  dead  for  thee,  even  all 
the  chief  ones  of  the  earth ;  it  hath  raised  up  from  their  thrones  all 
the  kings  of  the  nations  ?  " 


Daniel  Deronda  101 

cultivated  few,  and  address  themselves  to  them 
eloquently  and  gloriously.  The  hymns  of  the  Jews 
have  so  interpenetrated  the  very  heart  of  humanity, 
so  identified  themselves  with  the  best  longings,  the 
noblest  aspirations,  the  purest  hopes,  and  the  deepest 
sorrows  of  man,  that  still,  after  more  than  twenty 
centuries,  that  wonderful  hymnology  breathes  up 
day  after  day,  week  after  week,  from  millions  of 
households  and  hearts.  They  outbreathe  its  fervid 
aspirations  toward  a  purer  and  diviner  life.  They 
give  expression  to  its  profound  wailings  over  degra- 
dation and  fall.  They  give  utterance  on  all  the 
inscrutable  mysteries  of  existence ;  and  ever  and 
anon  as  the  clouds  and  darkness  break  away  from 
the  Infinite  Love, — they  burst  forth  into  the  exultant 
cry,  "  God  reigneth,  let  the  earth  be  glad.  .  .  .  Give 
thanks  at  remembrance  of  His  lioliness" 

But  important  as  is  this  factor  of  Judaism,  there 
is  another  generally  considered  which  has  perhaps 
exercised  a  still  more  profound  and  cumulative  influ- 
ence on  the  civilization  especially  of  the  West.  This 
lies  in  the  intense  indestructible  nationality  of  the 
race.  Eighteen  centuries  have  passed  since  they 
became  a  people,  "  scattered  and  peeled,"  their  "  holy 
and  beautiful  house"  a  ruin,  their  capital  a  desolation, 
their  land  proscribed  to  the  exile's  foot.  During  these 
centuries  deluge  after  deluge  of  so-called  barbarians 
has  swept  over  Asia  and  Europe :  Hun  and  Tartar, 
Alan  and  Goth,  Suev  and  Vandal, — we  attach  certain 
vague  meanings  to  the  names,  but  can  the  most 


102  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

learned  scholar  identify  one  individual  of  the  true 
unmingled  blood  ?  All  have  disappeared,  merged  in 
the  race  they  overran,  in  the  kingdoms  they  con- 
quered and  devasted.  The  Jew  alone,  through 
these  centuries,  has  remained  the  Jew  :  proscribed, 
persecuted,  hunted  as  never  was  tiger  or  wolf,  he  is 
as  vividly  defined,  as  unchangeably  national,  as  when 
he  stood  alone,  everywhere  without  and  beyond  the 
despised  and  hated  Gentile.  And  this  intense  and 
conservative  nationality  springs  essentially  out  of  the 
central  conception  of  Judaism,  "  God  is  one."  Be 
He  the  incarnation  of  pitiless  vengeance,  hardening 
Pharaoh's  heart  that  He  may  execute  sevenfold  wrath 
on  him  and  his  people  ;  be  He  the  Good  Shepherd, 
who  "  gathers  the  lambs  in  His  arms,"  and  for  their 
sakes  "  tempers  His  rough  wind  in  the  day  of  His 
east  wind;" — to  the  Jew  He  has  been  and  is,  "  I  am 
the  Lord;  that  is  my  name;  and  my  glory  will  I 
not  give  to  another." 

Through  those  long  ages  of  darkness,  devil- 
worship,  and  polytheism  (in  its  grossest  forms  all 
around),  the  Jew  stood  up  in  unfaltering  protest 
against  all.  Persecutions,  proscriptions,  tortures  in 
every  form,  were  of  no  avail.  On  the  gibbet,  on  the 
rack,  amid  the  flames,  his  last  words  embodied  the 
central  confession  of  Judaism,  "  O  Israel,  the  Lord 
thy  God  is  one  Lord."  Christianity,  the  appointed 
custodier  of  the  still  more  central  truth,  "  God  is 
love,"  had  to  all  appearance  failed  of  its  mission ; 
had  not  only  merged  its  higher  message  in  a  theistic 


Daniel  Deronda  103 

presentation,  dark  and  terroristic  as  that  of  Judaism 
at  its  dawn,  but  had  absorbed  into  its  scheme,  under 
other  names,  the  gods  many  who  swarm  all  around 
it ;  till  nowhere  and  never,  save  by  some  soul  up- 
borne by  its  own  fervor  above  these  dense  fogs  and 
mists,  could  individual  man  meet  his  God  face  to 
face,  and  realize  that  higher  life  of  the  soul  which  is 
His  free  gift  to  all  who  seek  it.  Between  this 
heathenized  Christianity  and  Judaism,  the  contrast 
was  the  sharpest,  the  contest  the  most  embittered 
and  unvarying.  Elsewhere  we  hear  of  times  of 
toleration  and  indulgence  even  for  the  hunted  Mono- 
theist, — in  medieval  Christendom,  never.  The 
Inquisition  plied  its  rack  for  the  Jews  with  a  more 
fiendish  zeal  than  even  for  the  hated  Morisco.  The 
mob  held  him  responsible  for  plague  and  famine ; 
and  kings  and  nobles  hounded  the  mob  on  to  indis- 
criminate massacre.  The  Jew  lived  on  through  it 
all, — lived,  multiplied  and  prospered,  and  became 
more  and  more  emphatically  the  Jew.  Is  it  too 
much  to  say  that  in  the  West  in  particular,  where 
this  contrast  and  contest  were  keenest,  Judaism  was, 
during  these  long  ages  of  terror  and  darkness,  the 
great  conservator  of  the  vital  truth  of  the  Divine 
unity,  under  whatever  forms  science  or  philosophy 
may  now  attempt  to  define  this ;  and  in  being  so, 
became  the  conservator  of  that  thought,  without 
the  vivifying  power  of  which,  howsoever  imperfectly 
apprehended,  all  human  advance  is  impossible  ?  Is 
it  exaggerating  the  importance  of  the  Jew  and  his 


104  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

intense  nationality,  based  on  such  a  truth,  to  say  that, 
but  for  his  presence,  "  scattered  and  peeled,"  among 
all  nations,  the  Europe  we  now  know  could  not 
have  been  ?  And  this  indestructible  nationality,  for 
whose  existence  miracle  has  been  called  into  account 
— has  it  no  significance  in  the  future  equal  to  what 
it  has  had  in  the  past  ?  There  seems  an  impression 
that  the  Jew  is  being  absorbed  by  other  races.  We 
hear  much  of  relaxing  Judaisms ;  of  rituals  and 
beliefs  assimilating  to  those  around  them  ;  of  peculi- 
arities being  laid  aside,  that  have  withstood  the  wear 
and  tear  of  centuries.  The  inference  is  sought  to 
be  drawn  that  the  Jew  is  beginning  to  feel  his  isola- 
tion, and  to  sink  his  own  national  life  amid  that 
among  which  he  dwells.  We  accept  all  the  facts  ; 
but  can  only  see  in  them  that,  under  the  influence 
of  the  profound  thought  and  research  of  its  great 
leaders,  Judaism  is  shaking  off  the  dust  of  ages,  and 
is  more  vividly  awaking  to  its  mission  upon  earth. 
We  believe  it  is  coming  forth  from  all  this  super- 
ficial change,  more  intensely  and  powerfully  Judaical, 
more  penetrated  and  vivified  by  that  thought  which 
for  untold  centuries  has  been  the  life  of  its  life. 
What  is  to  be  its  specific  future  as  a  leader  in  the 
advancement  and  redemption  of  humanity,  none  can 
foresee.  But  it  seems  the  reverse  of  strange  that  a 
genius  like  George  Eliot's  should  have  been  power- 
fully attracted  by  this  problem  ;  and  that,  in  one  of 
her  noblest  works,  she  should  have  very  prominently 
addressed  herself  to  at  least  a  partial  solution  of  it. 


Daniel  Deronda  105 

That  the  solution  she  suggests  is  a  noble  one,  few 
who  carefully  consider  the  subject  will,  we  think, 
deny.  The  establishment  of  a  Jewish  polity,  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word  a  theocracy,  where  the  Infinite 
Holiness  is  supreme,  and  in  its  supremacy  is  included 
a  reign  of  justice,  purity  and  love; — the  establish- 
ment of  such  a  polity  locally  between  the  material- 
istic proclivities  of  the  West  and  the  psychological 
subtleties  of  the  East,  mediative  between  them, 
communicating  from  each  to  each  of  those  essen- 
tials to  human  life  in  which  the  other  is  deficient, 
is  a  conception  worthy  of  her  genius. 

Another  minor  and  very  trivial  objection  to  the 
presence  of  this  Jewish  element  need  be  no  more  than 
adverted  to.  It  is  the  presence  of  such  different 
types  as  the  mean-souled  scoundrel  Lapidoth  ;  the 
shrewd  self-approving  trader  Cohen,  with  the  inimit- 
able picture  of  a  home-life  so  pleasant  and  kindly  ; 
the  vague  intense  enthusiasm,  the  ardent  aspirations 
and  fervent  hopes  of  Mordecai ;  the  absorbing  Judaism 
of  the  Physician  ;  the  fierce  revulsion  of  his  daughter 
against  her  race  and  name ;  the  meek,  delicate,  ethe- 
real purity  of  Mirah  ;  the  innate  Jewish  yearnings  and 
aspirations  of  Deronda,  expanded  by  all  the  breadth 
that  could  be  given  by  the  highest  Anglo-Saxon  cul- 
ture and  training.  To  those  who  take  exception  to 
this,  it  is  answer  more  than  sufficient  that,  as  an  artist, 
it  was  necessary  to  present  every  typical  phase  of 
Jewish  character  and  life ;  and  we  confess  there  are 
other  passages  in  the  work  we  could  better  spare  than 


106        The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

these  delicious  pictures  of  a  London-Jewish  pawn- 
broker at  home. 

Of  all  the  characters  portrayed  in  fiction,  there  is 
perhaps  not  one  so  difficult  to  analyze  and  define  as 
that  which  stands  out  so  prominently  in  this  wonder- 
ful work,  Gwendolen  Harleth.  At  once  attractive 
and  repellent — fascinating  in  no  ordinary  degree,  and 
yet,  in  the  estimation  of  all  around  her,  hard,  cold, 
and  worldly-minded — bewitching  alike  from  her 
beauty,  grace,  and  accomplishments,  yet  a  superficial 
and  seemingly  heartless  coquette, — she  presents  a 
combination  of  at  once  some  of  the  finest  and  some 
of  the  meanest  qualities  of  woman.  Her  hardness 
towards  her  fond,  doting  mother,  and  her  contempt 
for  her  sisters,  are  conspicuous  almost  from  her  first 
appearance.  Her  arrogant  defiance  of  Deronda  in 
the  gambling-house,  and  the  fierce  revulsion  of  p/ide 
with  which  she  received  the  return  of  her  necklace, 
are  entirely  in  keeping  with  these  characteristics. 
And  the  news  of  the  reduction  of  her  family  to  utter 
poverty  awakens  no  emotion  save  on  her  own  behalf 
alone.  Yet,  ever  and  anon,  faint  gleams  of  tenderness 
towards  her  gentle  mother  break  forth,  though  soon 
obscured  by  the  bitter  insistance  with  which  her  own 
claims  to  station,  wealth, and  luxury  assert  themselves. 
Her  first  acceptance  of  Grandcourt  represents  this 
phase  of  her  twofold  nature;  her  rejection  of  him  and 
flight  from  him,  after  her  interview  with  Mrs.  Glasher, 
are  equally  characteristic  of  the  second.  That  rejec- 
tion is  actuated  much  more  by  resentment  against 


Daniel  Deronda  1 07 

Mrs.  Glasher,  that  she  should  have  dared  to  anticipate 
her  in  anything  resembling  affection  he  had  to  give, 
and  against  him,  that  he  should  have  presumed  to 
offer  to  her  a  heart  already  sealed  to  anything  resem- 
bling love,  than  by  the  faintest  approach  to  it  in  her 
own.  The  leap,  as  it  were,  by  which  she  ultimately 
accepts  him,  is  merely  a  quick,  half-conscious  instinct 
to  secure  her  own  deliverance  from  poverty,  and  the 
attainment  of  those  higher  external  enjoyments  of  life 
for  which  she  conceived  herself  formed;  and  if,  in 
addition,  a  thought  of  relieving  the  wants  of  her 
mother  and  sisters  obtrudes,  it  holds  only  a  very  sec- 
ondary place  in  her  mind.  Deeming  herself  born  for 
dominion  over  every  male  heart,  in  her  utter  childish 
ignorance  of  human  character,  she  deems  that  Grand- 
court  also  shall  be  her  slave. 

But  through  all  her  relations  with  that  magnificent 
incarnation  of  self-isolation  and  self-love,  she  is  com- 
pelled to  cower  before  him.  Again  and  again  she 
attempts  to  turn,  only  to  be  crushed  under  his  heel  as 
ruthlessly  as  a  worm.  During  the  yachting  voyage 
it  is  the  same;  intense  inward  revulsion  on  the  one 
side — cold,  inexorable  despotism  on  the  other. 

The  drowning  scene  first  begins  to  stir  the  better 
nature  within  her.  The  intensity  of  terror  with  which 
she  regards  the  involutary  murderous  thought  and 
which  prompted  her  leap  into  the  water,  the  fervor 
of  remorse  which  followed,  all  begins  to  indicate  a 
nature  which  may  yet  be  attuned  to  the  highest  quali- 
ties.  On  the  other  hand,  the  sweet  clinging  trust  with 


108  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliot's  Works 

which  she  hangs  on  Deronda,  looks  up  to  him,  feels 
that  for  her  every  possibility  of  good  lies  in  associa- 
tion with  him,  are  those  of  a  guileless,  artless  child. 
She  has  been  called  a  hard-hearted,  callous  woman  of 
the  world  :  her  worldliness  is  on  the  surface  alone. 
Her  first  cry  to  Deronda  is  the  piteous  wail  of  a  for- 
saken child  ;  the  letter  with  which  their  relations 
close  is  the  fond  yearning  of  a  child  towards  one 
whom  she  looks  up  to  as  protector  and  saviour. 

Grandcourt  is  portrayed  before  us  in  more  massive 
and  simple  proportions  as  a  type  of  concentrated  self- 
ishness. We  dare  not  despise  him,  we  cannot  loathe 
him — we  stand  bowed  and  awe-stricken  before  him. 
He  never  for  a  moment  falls  from  that  calm  dignity 
of  pride  and  self-isolation — never  for  a  moment 
softens  into  respect  for  anything  without  himself. 
Without  a  moment's  exception  he  is  ever  consistent, 
imperturbable  in  his  self-containedness,  ruthlessly 
crushing  all  things  from  dog  to  wife,  under  his  calm, 
cold,  slighting  contempt.  He  stands  up  before  us, 
not  so  much  indomitable  as  simply  unassailable.  We 
cannot  conceive  the  boldest  approaching  or  encroach- 
ing on  him — all  equally  shiver  and  quail  before  that 
embodiment  of  the  devil  as  represented  by  human 
self-love. 

Fain  would  we  linger  over  the  Jewish  girl,  Mirah. 
She  has  been  spoken  of  as  characterless  ;  to  us  it 
seems  as  if  few  characters  of  more  exquisite  loveliness 
have  ever  been  portrayed.  From  her  first  appear- 
ance  robed  in  her  meek  despair,  through  all  her 


Daniel  Deronda  1 09 

subsequent  relations  with  Deronda,  her  brother,  and 
Gwendolen,  there  is  the  same  delicate  purity,  the 
same  tender  meekness,  the  same  full  acceptance  of 
the  life  of  a  Jewess  as — in  harmony  with  the  life  of 
her  race — one  of  "  sufferance."  Even  as  her  spirits 
gladden  in  that  sunny  Meyrick  home,  with  its 
delicious  interiors,  and  brighten  under  the  noble- 
hearted  musician  Klesmer's  encouragement,  the 
brightness  refers  to  something  entirely  without  her- 
self. In  one  sense  far  more  acquainted  with  the  evil 
that  is  in  the  world  than  Gwendolen  with  all  her 
alleged  worldliness,  it  is  her  shrinking  from  the  least 
approach  to  this  that  prompts  her  strange,  apparently 
hopeless  flight  in  search  of  the  mother  she  had  loved 
so  dearly.  Her  sad,  humble  complaints  that  she  has 
not  been  a  good  Jewess,  because  she  has  been 
inevitably  cut  off  from  the  use  of  Jewish  books,  and 
restrained  by  her  scoundrel  father  from  attendance 
at  Jewish  worship,  find  their  answer  in  her  deep 
unfailing  sense  of  her  share  in  the  national  doom  of 
suffering.  We  feel  with  Mrs.  Meyrick  "  that  she  is 
a  pearl,  and  the  mud  has  only  washed  her."  In  her 
startling  interview  with  Gwendolen,  the  sudden  in- 
dignant protest  which  the  inquiry  of  the  latter  calls 
out  is  a  protest  against  even  a  hint  of  evil  being 
directed  towards  that  which  has  been  best  and  highest 
to  her.  Her  love  for  Deronda  steals  into  the  maiden 
purity  of  her  soul  with  an  unconscious  delicacy  which 
cannot  be  surpassed;  and  as  she  parts  from  us  by  his 
side,  we  feel  that  she  is  no  Judith  or  Esther,  but  the 


1 10  The  Ethics  of  George  Eliofs  Works 

meek  Mary  of  the  annunciation,  going  forth  on  her 
unknown  mission  of  love  with  the  words,  "  Behold 
the  handmaid  of  the  Lord." 

Beside  the  exquisitely  meek  child-figure,  with  the 
small  delicate  head  faintly  drooping  under  the  sorrow 
which  is  the  heritage  of  her  race,  stands  up  Deronda 
in  his  calm  dignity.  As  he  lies  on  the  grass,  and 
the  first  faint  glimmering  of  the  possible  origin  of 
his  life  breaks  upon  him,  even  the  first  inevitable 
risings  of  resentment  against  Sir  Hugo  are  softened 
and  toned  down  by  the  old  yearning  affection  ;  and 
the  longings  for  the  unknown  mother,  intense  as  they 
are,  yet  shrink  from  full  discovery  of  what  she  may 
have  been  or  may  still  be.  He  and  he  alone,  in 
unconscious  dignity,  stands  up  uncowering  before 
Grandcourt.  His  whole  relations  to  Mordecai  are 
characterized  by  a  deep  suppressed  enthusiasm,  that 
fully  responds  to  the  enthusiast's  soul.  Towards 
Gwendolen  every  word  he  speaks,  every  act  he  does, 
is  marked  by  the  fervor  of  his  whole  nature  ;  but 
it  is  beside  the  fair  head  drooping  under  its  burden 
of  hereditary  sorrow  that  Deronda  passes  from  our 
sight,  the  fitting  type  of  him  who  shall  yet,  sooner 
or  later,  re-establish  that  great  Jewish  theocracy 
so  long  dreamt  of,  and  reaffirm  that  Judaism  yet 
holds  a  great  place  in  human  life  and  civilization. 

We  have  throughout  had  no  intention  of  dealing 
with  George  Eliot  merely  as  the  artist ;  but  if  we 
have  succeeded  in  showing  this  unity  of  moral 
purpose  and  aim   as  pervading  all  her  works,  as 


Daniel  Dcronda  1 1 1 

giving  rise  to  their  variety  by  reason  of  the  varieties 
and  modifications  it  necessitates  in  order  to  its  full 
illustration,  and  as  ministered  to,  directly  or  indirectly, 
by  all  the  accessory  characters  and  incidents  of  these 
creations, — the  question  naturally  arises,  whether 
this  does  not  constitute  her  an  artist  of  the  highest 
possible  order. 

But  the  true  worth  of  George  Eliot's  works  rests, 
we  think,  on  higher  grounds  than  any  mere  perfec- 
tion of  artistic  finish  ;  on  this  ground,  specially,  that 
among  all  our  fictionists  she  stands  out  as  the 
deepest,  broadest  and  most  catholic  illustrator  of 
the  true  ethics  of  Christianity  ;  the  most  earnest 
and  persistent  expositor  of  the  true  doctrine  of  the 
Cross,  that  we  are  born  and  should  live  to  something 
higher  than  the  love  of  happiness ;  the  most  subtle 
and  profound  commentator  on  the  solemn  words, 
"  He  that  loveth  his  soul  shall  lose  it :  he  that  hateth 
his  soul  shall  keep  it  unto  life  eternal." 


PRESS    OF    GEORGE   H.    BUCHANAN    AND    COMPANY 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 
or  on  the  date  to  which  tenewed.  Renewals  only: 

Tel.  No.  642-3405 
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Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 





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